Dark Forest--A black, Viral fate
by dzha4225
Summary: The universe is a dark forest. Every living organism is a hunter with a gun, carefully not to make any light or noise. Upon discovering anyone else, the only choice is to fire first-hide yourself, eliminate your enemy. The weak was to be food of the strong. Conservation is an evolutionary dead end. A flaw of the Human genome. Welcome to the top of the food chain
1. Chapter 1

(rated T for mild violence, and the Bittersweet truth of the Cosmos.)

**Introduction**

War. War never changes. The universe is a dark forest. Every living organism is a hunter with a gun, carefully not to make any light or noise. Upon discovering anyone, or anything else, the only choice is to fire first-hide yourself, eliminate your enemy.

The weak was to be the food of the strong. Conservation is an evolutionary dead end. A flaw of the Human genome. Welcome to the top of the food chain.

**Dark Forest-a black, viral fate**

(inspired by the story "the other first contact" by swampghost1. backstory for the Evolved, and wasted potential fully explored...hopefully)

(the Biknots are Supremacy-Harmony. The Evolved in this AU are Harmony-Supremacy... Who said that an A.I. rebellion can't be organic?)

(Also. the Citadel is Purity.)

**1980, Hope, U.S.A.**

Wind is howling...

Infected are roaring...

The town of Hope, what used to be a small town home of 4000 people, is now the ground zero of an engineered outbreak. An outbreak created by Blackwatch in order to select for super-soldiers to hope to fight Russia. And it went terribly wrong.

It all starts from a woman called Elizabeth Greene. Or MOTHER as will be called by Blackwatch. Or Hive Queen by the Citadel.

Redlight is a specific virus found inside an alien probe crashed in Roswell. This retrovirus "Activates dormant genetic information in the form of non-coding segments within eukaryote DNA. Granting traits of all the ancestors of said organism." Preliminary experimentation done by Blackwatch suggests that Redlight causes organisms to become enlarged, and violent. And greatly enhances the physical strength of those who are infected.

All prior experimentation done by Blackwatch have suggested that Redlight will destroy the consciousness of any human that happen to be infected. However, some of the infected have appeared to possess low-level intelligence that allows training akin to animal training by the Military. It have been suggested that certain type of Human DNA signature (believed to be a dead Transposon that were responsible for the separation of Humans and Neanderthals) allows the Infected to remain conscious...

Elizabeth Greene is of Nordic descent.

Elizabeth Green had the right Neanderthal DNA to cause Redlight to recognize it as the Hive Queen.

It didn't play out for the rest of Hope.

Blackwatch was expecting super-soldier level conscious survivors to emerge.

Blackwatch was not expecting to see something that is analogous to the Zerg emerging from their test-ground.

Nuclear fire envelops the small town.

Elizabeth Greene was recovered from the remains of the blast.

The unborn child of Elizabeth Greene was missing.

**22 April 2025, Manhattan, New York**

Sirens are blaring. Shattered glass littered everywhere. The (Used to be secret) facility is now in rubble, smoke and flames everywhere. A gaping hole could be seen on the ground of the containment facility. Broken restraints and bent iron cage bars tells the story of a violent escape.

"MOTHER has breached containment. I REPEAT: MOTHER has breached containment."

**24 April 2025, Manhattan, New York**

Blackwatch soldiers patrols carefully on the streets. Fires can be seen emanating from buildings. Roars of unknown creatures could be heard.

A quadruped creature suddenly burst out of a manhole-cover of the sewer. Blades for claws. No tail. The large creature ripped open a transport vehicle with a single slash, sending the flaming debris toward a group of Blackwatch soldiers, squashing two in the process.

"Fire RPGs!"

A soldier emerged from behind a piece of debris, rocket launcher on his shoulder. A rocket flies out of the thin-walled tube, guided by IR sensors toward the creature. It impacted the large creature, ripping open it's flesh. However, the creature quickly started regenerating. Gaping hole closing. Tendrils emerging from the wound knitting itself back together. The soldiers did not give it the chance of fully regenerating however. More rockets are launched. And they impacted the creature. The body stopped moving as it's head were blown into pieces.

"Appeared that the only way to stop these things is an Explosive bullet into their heads. Still works."

However, before the soldiers can regroup, more and more creatures emerged from the sewers. The buildings. The trees. Everywhere.

Civilians screaming. Blackwatch sent out helicopters to deploy thermobaric bombs. Bits of flesh flying everywhere. Flames engulfs much of downtown Manhattan.

**26 April 2025, Manhattan, New York**

Tanks stranded midair by huge tentacles emerging from the ground. Red flesh with black veins strewn across buildings. The Military have started intervention. Blackwatch running across streets. Rifles firing. Machine guns roaring. Infected rushes toward the vehicles, only to be turned into exploded, flaming pieces of mystery meat by the incendiary rounds employed by the Military. NYPD officers escorting survivors out of the infection. Sirens are blaring.

**28 April 2025, Manhattan, New York**

Enormous Infected creatures can be seen jumping between buildings. Two times larger than the previous. With wrecking balls as fists. The Military is undergoing retreat. NYPD officers have evacuated the area. Infected Walkers swarming every road and every street. Blackwatch have planted bombs onto the bridges.

"3,2,1, Detonate!"

The two bridges connecting Manhattan to the rest of the city fell into the sea, as massive explosions broke their foundations. Blackwatch guarding the third bridge. Helicopters buzzing across the sky. Bombs containing unknown material fell onto the infestation. A building with hundreds of fleshy sacs can be seen in the center of the infection.

**30 April 2025, Manhattan, New York**

"It appeared that Whitelight have worked. Civilians are no longer getting infected by aerosols. And-"

A Hunter appeared from behind the commander as the transmission have been suddenly interrupted. The Hunter sliced the commander into two halves with it's bladed claws, and, to the horror of all, tendrils emerged from the Hunter, and the unlucky commander is now nowhere to be seen.

"S*** they can now eat people!"

Fleshy sacs on the building, which is now called the Hive, bursted open to reveal even more Infected. Walkers shambled out from below. Hunters leaped from what used to be windows. Brawlers pops from the top. Once after a while, a large Sac emerges from the Hive, and from within, a Juggernaut bursts out using it's wrecking-ball fists.

"Authorizing use of nuclear weapon to contain infection! I repeat, the Cure DID NOT WORK! The Cure DID NOT WORK!"

The Hive shivered and shriveled as a bright meteor falls right on top of it, punching a hole into it's insides. Before it could heal, the object exploded with the light of a thousand suns.

Manhattan is now a large crater beneath a mushroom cloud.

**15 May 2025, GenTek Seattle**

"Nuclear containment have failed sir, we have made a mistake. Redlight is NOT vulnerable to water. Downtown New York have been infected. Infection was spreading through every route."

"How about Whitelight?"

"Whitelight did work to stop civilians and our Officers from being infected by Redlight aerosols. But..."

"But what?"

"But the Infected can still Consume people even if they are immune to the virus themselves. And as the Infected accumulates biomass, they shuttle it into Hives, where they used it to make more of the Infected."

"So the cure did not work at all."

(This is a nod to Plague Inc. In the late stages of a Necroa virus game play, even is the Cure have been successfully developed and distributed, as long as you had enough Zombies, and had the evolution "reanimate", you can still win the game.)

**18 May 2025, GenTek Seattle**

"Did you head of Dark Forest Evolution Virus SC3?"

"What's that?"

"A contingency plan sir, You do know that Redlight was code-named Eco-Harmony Assimilation Virus SC2 from the small amount of data I have extracted from their genome? It is encoded in a strange language by genetic code. The code that does not change between strains. The sole piece of code in Redlight that is not used in Translation. The code that lead us to the current cure, which have failed spectacularly."

This hooded figure is none but Alex Mercer. A GenTek researcher, son of the only one who remain uninfected during the Hope incident. An absolute Ruthless, the trauma from the Incident prompted Alex Mercer's mother to join GenTek, and also her Son Alex Mercer himself. The motto: "No-matter how strange or how twisted, humanity will always find a way."

Dark Forest Evolution Virus SC3, or better known by it's short-handed notation Blacklight, or Mercer virus, is one of GenTek's multiple contingency plans-plans that "should" save Humanity should something went wrong.

Blacklight is a modified strain of Redlight, with it's prime directive of preserving nature and connecting everything replaced with that of ensuring the survival of Humanity as independent, sapient souls no matter the cost. Blacklight have all the current ability of Redlight, with a special piece of code spliced in that allows it to Infect cells that are already infected by Redlight and take the genome of said cells and assimilate it into the genome of Blacklight itself, it was supposed to be the last-ditch effort to stop Redlight by enhancing the Human body itself to a level that could fight it directly-at the expense of making Humans themselves...no longer human.

Philosophy that Alex Mercer considered to be still viable to use as a cure.

However, currently, all experiments of Blacklight ended up turning into goop, as the Virally enhanced cell structure is too different from the normal cell structure of Metazoa, to the point that it can not properly host a Human consciousness, or being controlled by said consciousness-resulting in all current experiments to be completely wiped off consciousness, before falling apart into independent, non-interacting protoplasts that no longer display any activity at all.

**24 May 2025, Hudson river Bay**

Elizabeth Greene was sitting, comfortably, inside the large, flesh-laden cavity of the Undersea Hive.

"Elizabeth Green calling all Infected:"

"The time have come, Humanity have failed to stop us even using the best weapon within their arsenal. The spread of our virus will never be hindered any more!"

"It's time to reclaim Nature from the hands of Humanity, to rebuild the shattered conduits of Gaia, and to make Nature whole, once again!"

"Their mind divided without unity, Their weapons ineffective against our adaptation, Their flesh Weak, their technology Unnatural. While We are unified, We are an unending force of Nature, We are Legion, We ARE Nature!"

"Let's spread our Hive mind to every inch of the earth, and make life itself Whole, once again!"

**24 May 2025, GenTek Seattle**

"Why he was here?"

Alex Mercer pointed at an old, white-haired figure with black face. Neilson Freidheim Freeman, one of the best AI scientists available to them in this time of dire emergency. GenTek hopes to produce a version of Blacklight that can be safely used to convert a normal Human without destroying their consciousness or turning their bodies into goop. The best Neuroscientists, AI scientists, Nanoscientists and Evolutionary-Developmental biologists are all inside this secure, underground vault that should be able to withstand the onslaught of Redlight Infected and Elizabeth Greene's forces for at least one month.

Infection is spreading, Time is running, and there are already no more options.

**27 May 2025, GenTek Seattle**

Neilson Freidheim Freeman, the chief AI scientist, have found a way to safely upload a human consciousness into Blacklight biomass: by using a distributed analog-to-digital-to-analog system to store the pattern of connection and weights of the synapses of a living brain's neural network within the viral genome, and recreating this network using a hybrid between bioelectrical and digital connection within and between Infected cells, a mouse mind have successfully been transferred to a small pile of Blacklight Biomass-the puddle of protoplasm that used to be the mouse was evidently responding to EEG and Neural Stimulations just as would a normal mouse could.

**29 May 2025, GenTek Seattle**

Marcus d'morpheus, the chief Computer scientist, produced a pattern of interface-function calls that allows the uploaded neural network to interface with the genetic and morphokinetic component of Blacklight cells. Called NeuroDOS, this system successfully resulted in another puddle of amorphous biomass that reacted to external stimuli and food/chemical signals in a way similar to that of a mouse.

Alex Mercer suddenly went rogue, taking a sample of the virus, DFEV C3-L1, outside the building, and smashed the bottle containing the virus into the ground. Alex Mercer himself was nowhere to be seen.

**31 May 2025, GenTek Seattle**

No progress have been made, as the chief Evo-Devo scientist Schordinger-Higgs have commented: "forming a definite avatar for the uploaded consciousness caused Blacklight biomass to lose pluripotency, the resulting structure could not handle even 1 10th of the organism's original load. And it causes the organism to be trapped inside the state...the ability to consume other organisms, especially Redlight, have also been lost."

**5 June 2025, GenTek Seattle**

Alex Mercer was back. Nobody guarding the facility knows how he have re-entered the closely guarded, hermetically sealed facility. However, a sample of DFEV C3-L2a, or the Mercer strain, have been left inside the laboratories.

DFEV C3-L2a have a comparably low rate of causing subject death-mice that are injected with the strain remained the shape of a mouse, and the Blacklight biomass did not lose pluripotency-Consuming other organisms worked well, and cutting the mouse in two resulted in two, fully independent, mice.

**7 June 2025, GenTek Seattle**

Marcus d'morpheus have volunteered to inject himself with DFEV C3-L2a, which, despite all odds, successfully uploaded Marcus's consciousness into a nearly perfect copy of his original body made of Blacklight Biomass. After an initial state of confusion, it have been confirmed that most of the original Redlight's ability, including shape-shifting and limb/body mutation, worked successfully. DFEV C3-L2b have been created with the help of the second Prototype-or the first Evolved in history. Using part of Marcus's neural pattern, a more advanced, user-friendly operating system, BioLinux, was integrated into this new strain: it allows the user to control the "hereditary ability" of DFEV C3/Blacklight without direct training, and also included a developer interface/API that allows the user to sort/integrate, or use the genome of the organisms he/she have Consumed with a (comparatively less user-unique, and more programmer-friendly) system of genetic engineering/programming-assimilating traits with only a moderate need for brain-power.

**15 June 2025, GenTek Seattle**

DFEV C3-L2P/production model have been successfully created by the collaboration of the best minds of Humanity, using VirNT, the fully debugged and completely user-friendly operating system/user interface powered by complicated Genetic/Proteomic programming, Blacklight Game Version have passed the approval of GenTek Contingency department as a viable cure of the Redlight outbreak that have now completely enveloped much of the Atlantic shores.

"Greeting from GenTek High Directive, we have fully approved the use of DFEV C3-L2P Mercer/PROTOTYPE for mass immunization of general public. As it turned out, the best way to stop a virus is indeed a virus-more complicated, safed virus, but still a virus nonetheless. Production will start at-"

"Greeting from Elizabeth Greene, your Humans ARE really annoying... I see you create a race of sentient virus trying to stop Nature itself...How pathetic! Viruses by themselves aren't even alive..."

"But WE are alive. WE will make sure our virus will stay alive. WE will ensure the survival of Humanity as Individual and as Collective against all odds of the universe, and, especially, Nature."

John Connor, one of the developers of VirNT, smashed the vial that contained the first and only sample of DFEV C3-L2P on the desk with his bare fist.

30 minutes later, the army of Infected surrounding GenTek Seattle have seen what the 12 Prototypes of the new Blacklight race are capable of. In pieces.


	2. Chapter 2

**Evolved not kill Evolved** **1 July 2025, Houston**

Sarah Connor, one of the 12 Prototypes, traveled into the infested town. DFEV C3-L2 is a highly specialized genetic operating system with an (only okay) viral delivery system. Which means that in order to spread the precious immunity toward the leftover survivors on the continent, especially in the time where much of GenTek's high directors and facilities was already compromised, none of the planned delivery systems are now working... Which means that the sole survivors of the DFEV C3/Blacklight project directives have to manually deliver it to the ones who needed it...no matter whether they liked it or not. Infected attempted to stop her, but being one of the developers of Blacklight, she had mastery of it's every quirk and caveat. The quirks and caveats that allowed her to utilize the full potential of the "ancestral" Redlight traits, plus some of her own coding. The few unlucky Infected that tried to stop her in her way have now became part of her own biomass. The part that is currently being burned at an extremely high rate to fuel her race against time across the southern part of the U.S.

Kaiden Alenko, one of the many men and women that used to work for the enormous rocket and satellite assembly center in Houston, now hides inside a half-complete fuel tank of an Atlas V. as the Infected broke into the facility, most of the lab-coats does not know how to hide-they were brutally dismembered and eaten, their biomass dragged away to places of horror that he could only imagine. Kaiden was a physicist-He knew from their behavior that Infected hunts by heat- And the upper stage tank of the Atlas V rocket is lined with a nearly perfect insulator. An insulator that was meant to stop the liquid hydrogen from evaporating, but also shielded the heat of his body from detection by the larger Brawlers and Juggernauts that searched for heat and commanded the Hunters, Walkers and the numerous Fliers that hunted and killed the facility's staff members mercilessly. There were neither food nor water-the lab rules forbade the bringing of anything edible or drinkable into the cleanroom, which is now neither clean nor still a room. Kaiden was working on the rocket when the Infected arrived-and He didn't have any food or water on himself. Almost one day have passed, and Kaiden have started to feel the dizziness from dehydration. Infected was still roaring beneath him.

Suddenly, Kaiden Alenko could feel that the Infected below him started to look for something other than what's inside the building. Something that flies past the air with the roar of a jet-engine. Something that is not controlled by Elizabeth Greene. Sounds of Hunters's claws clanging on metal increases, the Infected mobilizing toward outside of the facility chasing the unknown object. He tried to climb out of the tank to see what happened, but a piercing pain have developed across all his body.

"The Whitelight have finally failed... maybe I will soon become one of the many infected that chases the unknown source of sound... I'm sorry for my parents. May God bless me and my son." The last thought slipped past Kaiden's mind as he fell into a deep coma.

Thousands of minute disturbances shook Kaiden's unconscious body, as minute tendrils and what looked like a dark smoke emanates from under his skin and disappearing in the same time.

The same thing is now happening on every Human still uninfected and still alive, that is contacting the air of this not-so-big town, as Sarah Connor spreads the DFEV C3-L2P as a finely aerosolized mist across the overran town. After killing and consuming several unlucky Hunters and a Juggernaut, Sarah Connor left this town with the same air-crackling speed as she came toward the town. America is still very big even with the MK1 Hyperspeed module she fashioned out of the flesh of a few Hunters and even more Flyers. The Infection is spreading, and there is still a lot of towns and people to save. No matter the cost.

Kaiden Alenko woke up in the same tank he fell unconscious in. He is still hungry. But the extreme thirst have gone. His myopia was gone. The Infected was still below him, but have seemed to calm down.

"Is this what feels to become an Infected?" Kaiden Alenko stood up, and peeked out from the top of the unfinished fuel tank. He could see multiple Walkers patrolling the floor and catwalk around the rocket. A strange craving emerged from his body, as Kaiden Alenko feels that if the Walkers in front of him was some of the most delicious food he have ever eaten. And as if a voice tells him "Eat those Infected! Eat these Walkers!".

"It looks like that I have in deed became an Infected...monster. I'm sorry for my son not being able to protect him while I am still able to... S**** the mad woman that made all this happen."

Guided by the strengthening hunger, Kaiden Alenko leapt from the edge of the Upper stage, flying across the 15-or so meters gap without even noticing, and landed right on top of one of the walkers. Black tendrils and a dark mist emerges from his body as he made contact with the Infected creature, enveloping the entire creature as sound of crackling bones and tearing flesh emanates from the unlucky Walker being torn apart and dragged into Kaiden's body. Eldritch fluids splashed from the carnage, and a reddish mist emanated from the horrifying scene that just happened. The tendrils and the black mist disappeared into Kaiden's body, as he is not standing in a puddle of what appears to be pus, blood, bone meal and water, face to face with another Walker that were used to be located behind the first.

"Did... I... just... ate it?" "What kind of monster had I became..." Kaiden Alenko stood confused in the place the Infected Walker used to be, his hunger slightly relieved, but he still could not feel his stomach. And his mind still shocked from the scene that just happened in front of his eyes.

Another Walker sensed the newly emerged threat, it's shambling body walked moved towards Kaiden. Still guided by fear from his knowledge of the Infected, Kaiden Alenko backed off the walking corpse as best as he could, before there was nowhere to go.

"Even if I die, I shall at least put a wound on Elizabeth Greene's Infected army."

"Even if I have no weapon, I will still fight you."

Kaiden Alenko clenched his fists tightly, and punched the closing Walker in the face.

Once again, Black tendrils and dark mist emanates from Kaiden's arm, punctured into and torn the Walker into thousands of tiny pieces, fluids splashing everywhere and a misty gas drifting up from the carnage, before pulling every small piece of flesh and what appeared to be a glowing red substance into his body.

Kaiden Alenko was utterly shocked as the same scene happened the second time in front of his eyes. No longer feeling hungry, he noticed that what looks like an icon the shape of a window have appeared on the top left corner of his field of view. As soon as he noticed that small icon, the small icon suddenly magnified into a simple drop menu.

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Hello-

-Energy 1055.24 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"Hello?"

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-This is DFEV C3/L2P rev1, You have been Evolved.-

-Tutorial-

-System info-

-Energy 1055.22 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"System info"

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-This is the operating system/console interface for the DFEV Dark Forest Evolutionary Genetic&Bioengineering platform by GenTek-

-You are currently running on Virtual Machine Lazarus Ver 1.8 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Tutorial-

-Energy 1055.21 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"Tutorial"

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Hello User, if you see this message, you should not panic.-

-This is the DFEV Dark Forest Evolutionary&Bioengineering platform by GenTek-

-You have been Evolved-

-This is the HUD of your current situation-

-Look around to move the mouse cursor-

-The white box is your cursor. GenTek's newest advanced CV API will produce live feed of the best property analysis result of anything currently boxed inside the cursor-

-Next-

-Energy 1055.20 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"I see these are Walkers. Also a Hunter and several Fliers. What's next?"

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Herditary abilities of DFEV C3/L2P includes the following-

-Polymorph-

-Consume-

-Autowalk-

-Prev-

-Next-

-Energy 1055.19 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"What I'm supposed to do?"

-Error: Invalid command-

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Herditary abilities of DFEV C3/L2P includes the following-

-Polymorph-

-Consume-

-Autowalk-

-Prev-

-Next-

-Energy 1055.18 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"Polymorph"

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2 support complete controllable polymorphing only for Humanoid models Update or download relevant software to use non-Humanoid models-

-Move your cursor to the extreme left of the screen your field of view-

-Current models-

-Kaiden Alenko(Default)-

-Lvl.1 Walker (#002)-

-Lvl.1 Walker (#003)-

-Energy 1055.17 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"Lvl.1 Walker (#002)"

The outer surface of Kaiden Alenko suddenly started to shimmer, smoke particles emanating fro the body and disappeared back inside, and the body of Kaiden have changed to become almost identical to the Walker he have just consumed.

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Herditary abilities of DFEV C3/L2P includes the following-

-Polymorph-

-Consume-

-Autowalk-

-Prev-

-Next-

-Energy 1054.81 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"Autowalk"

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-The arrows on your HUD indicates all possible routes toward any point/object you are currently pointing with your cursor-

-In order to engage target, simply move toward the arrows-

-The GenDynamic API will automatically perform all the necessary maneuvers needed to reach your current direction in optimal time and energy-

-Update or download relevant software to increase Autowalk performance and optimization-

-Energy 1054.80 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

Kaiden Alenko moved toward the Hunter on the bottom floor of the facility. As his higher thought processes sends the command to move to the position where the Hunter was, Kaiden Alenko's body, as if by instinct, flipped down from the catwalk, hands grabbing the metal railings on the side of the catwalks while feet anchors precisely on the various divots and extrusions on the wall, parkouring professionally down from 4th floor to the 1st floor.

"Consume"

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-The current models of DFEV can consume any living organism by direct contact-

-However, for anything whose fluid-containing interior is not directly available through Enhanced cellular tendrils alone, the outer shell of said organism must be broken first in order to expose the interior-

-When an available target is in close proximity within 0.05 m of any part of your biomass, click the "Consume" option on the right side of your cursor-

-Energy 1050.80 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

"F***"

-Error: Invalid command-

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Energy 1050.79 MJ EP 2/10-

-84/168kg-

-Safety Mode-

The Hunter was acting normally without any alert, as it thought that the figure walking toward it is just another Walker under Elizabeth Greene's order.

Kaiden Alenko sneaked toward the back side of the Hunter, and clicked "Consume".

The armored exterior of the Hunter blocked off the tendrils that emerged from the strange acting "Walker". The Hunter now knows that this "Walker" is not a part of Elizabeth Greene's Hive Mind.

The Hunter let off a deafening roar, turned back toward the figure that tried to harm it, claws raised and slashed toward the source of Danger.

Only to see that Kaiden Alenko is no longer there.

Using Autowalk, Kaiden Alenko ran and jumped between the various appliances and debris on the floor, lifting up pieces of the debris and threw them at the mightiest strength he could produce, toward the enraged Hunter. The Hunter sliced one large desk in to two stools with one of it's claws, then a rock into two halves. Then a Walker in to two screeching pieces from the middle.

-Energy 1022.50 MJ-

-Energy 1010.21 MJ-

-Energy 1001.10 MJ-

-Energy 995.20 MJ-

Kaiden noticed a large canister with the word "Hydrazine, Explosive, Toxic(T+)" on it, standing on top of a large shelf. Hydrazine that used to be fuel for the newest Mars probe. Fuel that may well be his only chance of victory. Using the same Autowalk feature, He quickly ran toward the canister, pried it off the shelf, liquid spilling out from severed tubing on the canister. Smell of Ammonia started to fill the room. He also saw a few rocket igniters on a desk, so he picked one up. Stuffing the cylindrical piece of packed explosives into the canister of hydrazine from the holes left behind by the broken tubing, Kaiden Alenko threw the now highly explosive canister towards the Hunter. The Hunter sliced into the canister with it's claws. The canister exploded in a powerful burst of orange flames, shrapnel and debris flying everywhere. From the advantage point of Kaiden Alenko, he could see that one of the Hunter's arms have been torn off by the explosion, and the armored skin of the Hunter have been charred by the orange hydrazine fireball and started to fall off. Red, pulsating, glowing flesh of the Infected can be seen from beneath. Before He saw the lower half of his body right in front of his eyes.

-Energy 950.67 MJ EP 2/10-

-79/168kg-

In the first thought, Kaiden Alenko thought that he will die from the same explosion he have created to wound that Hunter due to his stupidity. The next second, the cut on the two halves of Kaiden Alenko's body is now enveloped within a thick, black mist. Black tendrils emerges from the cut face of the two halves, meeting each other and starts to pull the two halves of Haiden Alenko back together. 3 seconds later, the cut that used to separate the upper half and lower half of Kaiden Alenko's body have all but disappeared without a trace. Kaiden Alenko have also found that his appearance have changed back to his original, or Default appearance.

-Energy 932.21 MJ EP 2/10-

-79/168kg-

Still shocked from his new found ability of instant healing, Kaiden Alenko did not waste any time - He quickly ran toward the now wounded, and still not fully-regenerated Hunter, pressed one of his hands onto the squirming, fresh red glowing muscles, and clicked "Consume".

This time, the same mass of tendrils and black mist is able to penetrate the now cracked shell of the Hunter, the Hunter produced the last roar in despair, before being shredded into hundreds and thousands of pieces and pulled into Kaiden Alenko's body, leaving behind a puddle of liquids and a pile of ground-up bones.

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Command line-

-Settings-

-Code editor-

-Energy 4811.14 MJ EP 10/10-

-168/168kg-

-Full access-

Many other "Humans" have emerged from the rubble that used to be the town of Houston. Many have mutated limbs, some had claws , some holding what seems to be a sword, and there is even one black man that have created a huge blade for one of his arms. Judged by the eldritch looking fluid dripping from the edge of said blade, this man must have went through quite a battle with the Infected in the town.

James Heller: "We all thought we were the chosen one when we found out that something gave us the abilities that used to be exclusive to the Infected monsters that turned our town into their breeding ground. From the message we now knew that this is not a gift and it is not accidental. This is a contingency plan created by the best minds of Humanity for the event of nature's vengeance. This is the desperate legacy of the only ones that were awake when everyone else was asleep. This is a call for WAR! Humanity is not fallen, Nature may unite it's forces against us under Elizabeth Greene but Nature is stagnant, it had it's limits that it can not overcome. We are constantly evolving as we had the means to do so. Only we Humans had the mind and brain power to push evolution past it's stagnant limits. We are the Evolved, and we will not perish in this dark forest of the Universe."

Jack Harper: "Elephant may kill Elephant, Tigers may kill Tiger, Ape may kill Ape, but Evolved don't kill Evolved. Elizabeth Greene thought that individuality caused disunity that made us fight ourselves and made us weak, what she failed to see is that the same individuality is what made us Humans create, innovate, evolve, and what will ultimately bring us better than anything she could ever imagine!"

(One of the reason Real-Life Hive Minds, like ants or bees, are evolutionarily stagnant. Ants have been around for at least 220 million years, and the first modern bees appeared in the late cretaceous circa 80 million years ago. And they still resembled their ancestors, not even a single detail have changed- As soon as you had unlimited access to everything your species have ever developed, you stop looking for new ways to solve a problem and stick with existing solutions whenever a new chellenge is met. And all knowledge of an anthill covers a massive range of different possible challenges in an ant's standpoint. This prevent the ants themselves from mutating to tackle an evolutionary challenge, as there is always a (nomatter how inefficient) mean of dealing with said challenge buried within the anthill's collective memories. Same story for fictional Hive Minds- a Hive Mind can not innovate because nomatter what chellenge they met, there is always an existing (often quite poor) solution somewhere down the collective. It worked initially- But a solution that one may come up in tha absense of knowledge of an existing one within the collective can often solve problems more than what it was originally designed for. And by accumulating more and more such innovative solutions through the action of the millions of individuals within a society, the collective's ability of solving problems eventually improves, and the entire species evolves one problem at a time. Hive Minds may always have some sort of solution whenever a problem meets them, yet the collective ability of a Hive Mind in solving problems will not increase because no new knowlege and novel solutions are made when the collective's will is used to solve the problem. Hence why ants are still ants, and bees are still bees.)

Samuel Norman: "Everyone who stood here that still had their own independent mind had a different past. Some wealthy. Some poor, Some prince, Some serf. Some hero, Some criminal. Some knowledgeable, some illiterate. But if I was to point out ONE trait common through all of us, is that we are now all survivors standing on the same starting line. What used to be our conflict of interest no longer matter in this new world. We are all Awake. We are all Evolved. United we stand, divided we fall."

(For anyone who have commented on the purported Hive Mind- Keep in mind that Viruses in Real Life are dumb and non-active. Let alone Sentient. As this work is intended to stick to Real-world physics and biology without introducing Magic from other works, Blacklight, New Blacklight® and other versions of the genetically modified Hobo-Shoggoths will be denied use of Magic- Even Space Magic like the Element Zero from Mass Effect, or QEC (Real-life QEC can only be used for encryption, not FTL instant-communications like what Mass Effect (Circa 2010) claimed due to the lack of understanding on this subject) (Though Redlight would be allowed to use Magic that is defined in the Universe of Mass Effect- Biotics, for one. and other shenigans that Element Zero does in-universe.) (Though they will still try- with catastrophic consequences.). For now and on, Blacklight will only stick to science and technologies that had direct reference within Google Academic, plus some logical extension of the papers themselves+certain exaggeration to make it gameplay-wise compatible to what you see in the Games. As Hive Minds violate known scientific theories regarding the light-speed limit of communication, and there is no way that a radio could be made small enough to fit inside a cell (and even if you managed to do it, the trillions of cells within a single body will clutter out all possible channels in Radio frequency long before instant, cell-to-cell communication was achieved for less than 2.5*10^-6 of the total cell number of an average Human.), Blacklight itself would have no access to a Hive Mind, and instead rely on communication technologies that worked: Electrical communication through wires, plus some large-scale slow data transfers handled through varients of gene editing. None of these mechanisms are capable of crossing the air-gap between disconnected Biomass, so they would have to stick to Human-style communications by talking and sign language. For now.)

(Individual-level communications through the use of existing or known technologies, like WIFI or GSM, would be soon made available to the Evolved- As soon as they develop the technology to build the more traditional forms and scales of electronics required in these technology with molecular manufacturing. Although it will be best a form of glorified, organic Internet instead of the instant mind-upload shennigan in Biomass Effect- Instant, Full-Brain upload to a remote location is just not possible within that timescales under Shannon's limits of information theory with transmitters the full-body size of an Evolved. let lone the brain of one (which is much, much smaller).)


	3. Chapter 3

**1****st**** Jan 2026**

The new year's bell rung, but no one is listening. The new spring was beginning, but it's still frigid.

As Elizabeth Greene infests nearly the entire North American continent, DFEV SC3/L3 have been born, created by the 7th Prototype John Connor.

CODEX: DFEV/versions

Despite having the name "Virus" inside it's name, DFEV C3/Blacklight is in fact, a genetic/transcriptomic biocomputer system that was designed both an interface between the mind and the genome, and an operating system for controlling the result. And for hosting the mind as the highly modified cellular/bionanotechnological substrate it operates on (and modifies it's user into) is incapable of forming a brain the same structure and function as the original brain. (and also because the brain is both a structural weakness of the Bionanotechnological body and a vital organ that will cause the User to be killed if damaged to any significant degree. After all, Dismemberment and Decapitation is a common thing during the fight with the Infected, as the (now deceased) Blackwatch have proven during the first Outbreak in Manhattan, New York.)

(Think Neuralink, but with uploaded minds interfaced with Carbon-based Biomass rather than organic minds interfaced with Silicon-based chips.)

The word "Virus" in DFEV is simply a reference to it's delivery system: a retroviral agent derived from the EHAV SC2/Redlight virus, with no less than 16 different strains/packages of the retrovirus carrying the 4 main modules of the Blacklight operating system, all working in cooperation to deliver/implement the system in the body of a carbon-based Sophont/Sapient being. More specifically, that of a Human survivor.

As does any other computer systems, DFEV SC3/Blacklight are classified into distinct versions from it's developmental history, with different versions differing significantly in things like Kernel architecture, Hardware specifications, implementation details, UI, integrated features and etc.

L-versions: L-versions are the major revamp versions/ major branches of the DFEV system. L-versions are separated by the architecture of the Kernel-the genetic/transcriptomatic biocomputer inside every Blacklight cell nucleus that performs the function of the Processor and the Memory, the basic framework that makes the entire system works as specified in the Build/Implementation.

Major updates, or Letter versions: Letter versions, so called because it is signified by a letter immediately after the L-version header in each version number, signifies major changes in the UI-SKI layers of DFEV SC3/Blacklight versions that were developed using the same Kernel. The same difference that separated GNU linux and Android.

Revisions,or Revs: Revs are changes within the implementation and/or features of any specific Blacklight System Module-UI/GUI updates, Software update mechanisms, Command formats, File Managers, Compilers/word editors et cetera. The same sort of difference you may find between Deepin, Debian and Ubuntu, for example.

Updates/Builds: These are the versions that emerges from optimization, debugging and in general, binary compilations of a Main branch source code between which only minor adjustments have taken place. Only details that matters the developers like Commentation in the code or the naming/implementation of a certain algorithm/function for example. Things that the User can see and interact with are usually unchanged, and when it Do change the mechanism of coding across different Updated/Builds are usually preserved. Usually. With a few exceptions between certain Builds of some of the modules. Like the difference in certain parts of the grammar/library functions between Ver 2.x and Ver 3.x of the Python coding platform.

CODEX: DFEV SC3/L3/Major changes

Muscle technology/ Why metazoa have the weakest muscles in the entire domain of life:

The Original versions of DEFV SC3, up to L2b/L2P, used the same muscle structure as the Redlight Infected-identical to Metazoan muscles, only with it's mammalian limit removed and the resulting increased wear and damage compensated by the same ancestral repair mechanisms that is also employed by the Redlight. However, since version L3a, the increased understanding of force-generating organelles employed by various kinds of Protists, derived from the genes of consumed Ciliates by John Connor; have meant that the musculature of DFEV SC3/L3+ have been completely revamped, and no longer resembled Metazoan muscles.

Metazoan muscles uses a bundle of Myosin to grab onto and pull upon filaments of Actin, a process called the Sliding Filament Hypothesis. This process is limited by the strength of Myosin itself-10 times weaker then Dynein, 20 times weaker than Kinesin, and aren't designed for muscle contraction in the first place. Myosin was originally evolved to aid in the remodeling of the Actin cytoskeleton of eukaryotic cells by creating a mechanism that allows the Actin microfilaments to be slided against each other in the opposite direction of Actin treadmilling-for example, to pull back the trailing edge of a moving Amoeba, or to aid in cell division. Myosin is very weak and very slow-their original purpose is to position and hold the Actin filaments in specific relative locations, and are consequently designed to stick to the filament when not moving&had a relatively weak power stroke that is in the order of magnitude as the tugor pressure that is exerted upon the plasma membrane that they are designed to hold on and maintain shape-a shape that is controlled through balancing the Myosin pull force that tries to collapse the membrane and the Osmotic pressure that tries to expand it. The original Metazoa, the Placozoa, used this process to move itself across the ocean floor, and, due to the laziness of evolution, this inefficient and weak process were inherited and employed by all of Metazoa-from ants to elephants, from shrimps to birds.

The DFEV SC3/L3 musculature was based on the contractile sheath of the Ciliate Stentor Coreulius, using Tubulin instead of Actin and Kinesin/Dynein instead of Myosin, this combination produces a structure that is very similar to Metazoan muscles, yet completely different. For example, L3 and higher Blacklight muscles can push (your Metazoan muscles can't!), can push twice as hard as it can pull, while being 20 times as strong as Metazoan muscles in the pull direction and 40 times stronger in the push direction. The Microtubule based structure means that they can be built while pushing and disassembled while pulling, effectively granting infinite range providing adequate Biomass supplies. This have interesting effects on the way Evolved moves and fights...but only time and more coding will make this relevant. From now on, an Evolved will be almost 10 times stronger than a Hunter, 2.5 times stronger than a Brawler, and almost half as strong as a Juggernaut.

Evolved information panel/Desktop:

DFEV SC3 L3a/b is the first version of Blacklight that had a proper GUI desktop other than the HUD system used for real-time interface. Incorporating features of a Desktop file management system ( ) into a Window/Portal based process management system, WinBOS 95/98 allows quick,real time access to advanced features like Code Editor / Settings and allows interaction of a large variety of Application level programs using the instinct-level system of an Attention based Cursor-the same as the HUD Cursor of DFEV SC3/L2P, with advanced control options like LMB and RMB, Linguistic Center based typing and a "mental keyboard" that the user can mentally control like one of his/her limbs...just like controlling a video game.

User reviews suggests this GUI/Keybord and Mouse based User Interface is considerably more instinctive and easy to use, and (comparably better than the older versions) much more efficient than the Command Line based DFEV SC3/L2b/L2P systems. (Kaiden Alenko is c***ing...)

Software Sharing/Apt-get:

Good codes and Applications are not just for the use by it's author-Intelligence is fundamentally a slow, random process and the Spark of Genius is only found sparingly among different Individuals. Blacklight can reproduce just like it's Users can-through binary fission to create two identical copies of the User's genome, form and mind down to all memories and knowledges/skills of said individual. But it's often desirable, or even life-critical to share a piece of useful code/information/skill(neural pattern) to another Individual other than just your offspring. The Apt-get feature, first implemented in version DFEV SC3/L3b, solves this corundum by allowing pieces of code, information and even neural patterns to be encoded in small, circular DNA called plasmids, bare or packaged inside a viral capsid, and shared between individuals that had the same Apt-get feature (which means DFEV SC3/L3b and higher). (Kaiden is still c***ing...) In order to use this feature, consume something that had the plasmid(s) on(in) it, and type in Terminal/Command Line "apt-get (name of the code/information/neural pattern you wanted to get)".

(Honestly, just as my other work Chem Age focuses on chemistry, Biknota focuses on biochemistry and molecular biology, this work will be focusing on OS/Networking platforms and information systems programming...)

(Did you recognize the GNU/Linux references?)

(Binary fission and Budding are the two main methods of reproduction of (single-celled) ciliated protozoa. Conjugation exchanges genetic information and (in ciliates) scrambles and re-loads their Macronuclear Genome, but does not (usually) result in new cells being created other than the two original cells that underwent conjugation.)

(It's like you k**ses someone and walks off, both two, genetically, completely new people.)

**2****nd**** Jan 2026**

Infection spreads like wildfire, but so does Hope. The first of Evolved, originated from Houston, Seattle, Boca Chica, Kennedy, and the other 8 city/towns the 12 Prototypes went to spread the DFEV SC3.x agent, became themselves the spreader of the same agents. Newer versions of Blacklight, but still Blacklight. As the founding 12 towns are largely cleansed of the Infected (but still under siege by enemies...or food?), technological R&D have resumed on the devastated continent. Blacklight/Humanity/Evolved is evolving, but so does Redlight/Elizabeth Greene/Nature. Technology that is not part of the Evolved's own bodies sprouts from the ground of the Founding Towns, a Hodge-podge of biotechnology, nanotechnology and old technology left from before the Outbreak. Purity Vision were developed by a young woman, Dana Mercer, and the first liberation operations have been sent, guided by the original L2 veterans, into the infested wilderness surrounding the 12 Founding towns.

James Heller, one of the last survivors of the Houston Outbreak and one of the Founders of New Houston, leading a small team of Evolved and Synthetic Infected (the Pack Leader power from Prototype 2), disembarks towards the nearest Hive, 100 kilometers southwest of Houston, in what used to be the busy shoreline city of Portland. Their goal: Reach the hive, infect it with the newest revision of DFEV SC3/L3b, severing command and control of Infected in a 50km radius while using the Hive and it's associated network's biomass to "liberate" any surviving uninfected Humans by spreading the Blacklight OS to them... (Since when you make someone sick in one way to stop him/her getting really, really sick in another way? The word "Vaccine" came from the Vaccinus virus that infects diary cows which causes milking maids' hands to get a blister once and only once. Harmless in humans but causes the Immune system to produce nearly complete immunity towards the much more deadly Smallpox virus. Of course the DFEV "Evolution" works in a fundamentally different way that does not exactly "Preserve" genetic Purity of the Human Subject/User, but it's not a concept that is completely alien to our timeline...yet.)

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.3, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Payload Secure-

-71.24 Km from Target-

-Command Line-

-Settings-

-Code Editor-

-CompileX V0.1.1-

-GenDBG V-

-Energy 5950.49 MJ EP50/250-

-215/255 kg-

-Full Access-

15 shadowy figures leaped across the dark, starless night sky of the U.S. Rural area with speed faster than the fastest bullet train before the Outbreak, burning hydrocarbons trailing behind each one of the figures, dimly illuminating the Infected hellscape beneath them.

"Thud...Thud...Thud..."

"Thud Thud Thud Thud..."

"Thud...Bang!"

Walkers smashed into a burst of flaming remnants before their animal-like remnant instinct could notice, Hunters escaping the explosions in all direction, only the bottom half remaining of the one unlucky Hydra which got stomped on by one of the Synthetic Juggernauts after felling what it would be like to be a piece of rock right beneath an asteroid impact. Another Evolved then landed (before leaping off again) on exactly the same spot, turning it's remaining half into a cloud of quickly expanding red mist and debris.

James Heller, speeding toward Portland under Orion Propulsion so does the rest of his small team, did not even noticed the carnage. As he reached past the apoapsis of his current hop, the upper half of his body inhales and compresses the air around him, expanding it through a narrow nozzle in his waist that caused the temperature to drop, and the oxygen inside it to liquefy, before the lower half of his body accepts the liquid oxygen and mixed it with a precisely measured charge of Triglycerides on his feet as he approaches the next point in the team's course of nearly one thousand hops toward the Hive of Portland. As his feet impacts the ground, the compression heating from the impact shock detonated the charge, sending another few dozens of Infected flying in all directions not all in one piece, while the force from the detonation, coupled with the reclaimed energy from the last hop, compresses an Elastin based spring inside his legs, which is then released almost instantly as it propelled James Heller into the next hop at velocities almost half the speed of sound.

The Synthetic Hunters and Juggernauts had an even greater mass, which translates to an even greater explosive charge for each hop, which, unintentionally, turned the ground beneath their landing points and the Infected around them into a cloud of rapidly expanding, dirt and debris ridden red mist at each hop.

"Thud..."

"Thud...Thud...Thud..."

"Thud-Splash...Thud...Thud...Thud...Thud..."

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.3, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Payload Secure-

-2.12 Km from Target-

-Command Line-

-Settings-

-Code Editor-

-CompileX V0.1.1-

-GenDBG V-

-Energy 532.56 MJ EP51/250-

-50/255 kg-

-Full Access-

The Hive is just in front of the team as they landed from the last hop, most of Biomass already combusted as fuel. The few unlucky Infected that got caught in the landing zone is now part of James Heller and the rest of the team's Biomass stores, replenishing their dwindling supplies that were used as fuel during their rapid travel from New Houston.

"O.M.G."

"That is no longer a building..."

A large structure, consists of red, glowing flesh piled haphazardly with a spire of squirming tentacles pointing towards the sky, and what seems to be modified mouths on the sides of the bottom.

"The infected have also evolved... so Ironic."

"I didn't see any infested pustules on this structure... I wonder that how this 'Hive' made the Infected we see in the path."

"Or whether this is the Hive we are looking for."

The spire on top of the large structure starts to shiver, red bioluminescent glow intensifying from almost non-existent to nearly blinding in the night-adapted eyes of the Evolved, before James Heller was propelled backward for multiple 10s meters by a powerful acoustic shock-wave into an abandoned building just behind him. The mouth-like structures in the bottom of the structure opened, emerging from them numerous Hunters and innumerable Walkers, while swarms of Infected can be seen emerging from behind every crevice, every window and every cover in the surrounding town.

"That. Is. Impressive. Easy meal."

The Synthetic Hunters Heller brought with him reacted instantly to the wave of Infected, their clawed arms effortlessly sliced apart rows of Walkers, while the other L2P Evolved sprang into the field of debris and diced Infected flesh, tendrils and mist trailing behind them pulling the biomass into their bodies at the same time as their bladed appendages cuts into the next Walker in front of them.

"Ashley, Desolas, John, Kaiden, and rest, Resupply Biomass using the Walkers, H01-06, clear and guard the area, J-01, J-02, H-06-10, attempt to break into the Hive. I want the core to be reached and the Payload delivered as fast as possible."

James Heller summoned his signature crescent blade, a precisely placed charge of Oxyliquit detonates behind his feet propelling him into the "mouth" of one of the large Brawlers guarding the "Mouths" of the Hive. Eldritch fluids of an unknown origin, that passes for Blood for the Infected, starts to spill out of the Brawler's mouth as James Heller sliced through it's insides, it's large Bladed appendages unable to reach the threat from within as all it's vital internal organs were cut up into pieces even before James Heller clicked "Consume". The large, monstrous creature suddenly collapsed into itself as numerous tendrils emerges from within, shredding it's biomass into tiny bits and pieces, fluids and minerals extracted and expelled from every single piece splashing everywhere, extreme heat from the assimilatory metabolism of Blacklight distorts the air above the carnage as Heller consumes the Brawler from within, emerging in the middle of a large puddle of liquids and ground-up bones that were all the inedible parts of the Brawler.

This is the same, signature strategy of James Heller, first used when he was first "Evolved" by Sarah Connor during the Houston Outbreak on a Brawler standing in front of what used to be his House. Which is also where he got his crescent blade form he was currently using from. The same signature attack that gave him and his clones/offspring the nickname "Heller the ripper". something that one of his clones will win the approval of a Krogan in the distant future.

Kaiden Alenko summoned his modified clawed form. As the two Synthetic Juggernauts pounded away on the reinforced shell on one of the entrances of the Hive using their wrecking-ball-on-a-chain's, Kaiden Alenko leaped up the structure of the Hive, climbing up the side using the bladed claws above his hands as ice-picks to stab into and anchor onto the glowing, squirming fleshy Biomass of the Hive while the same bladed claws on his feet lodges sturdily on to the exterior of the Hive like the shoe spikes of a logger clinging onto a tree trunk.

Kaiden Alenko could see a large budge connecting to multiple structures he could only assume to be speaker horns on the very top of the spire as he runs up the twisted tentacles that made up the spire. Sounds from infrasound to ultrasound frequencies could be detected emerging from them in a cacophony of screams, roars and whispers.

"The speakers! It must be what the Hive uses to control the Infected!"

"John, Ashley, keep an eye on the Fliers while I go and destroy the speakers; Heller, tell me when you breach the Hive's entry/exit ports!"

Thousands of Infected Fliers, from the size of a small bird to the size of a helicopter, left their patrol routes and speed toward the spire as they chased Kaiden Alenko in an attempt to stop him from destroying the speaker complex on top of the spire.

Ashley Williams, the rogue of the team, summoned multiple tendrils from her body, each impales a Flyer and pulls it from the sky, adding it's biomass to herself as the impaled Flyer is being pulled into her body.

John Harper, the marksman of the team, meanwhile, have some other plans.

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.3, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Command Line-

-Settings-

-NppCompile++ 1.0.2-

-IDLE 6.2.4-

-Energy 3798.62 MJ EP 64/250-

-107/192 kg-

-Administrator Access-

cd usr

cd documents

cd battle_scripts

Python27 ConventionalGun Pactin 0.804 0.03 0.07 INFbone 0.0024 Oxyliquit-triglyceride 0.002 0.005 100kw 100kw -attach=RARM -replace=true

A ripple propagates from John Harper's right shoulder down across his right arm as the Biomass remodels itself into a long, smooth, iridescent, tubular structure with a hole down the middle and aiming cross-hairs on the tip and bottom of the tube-a Conventional Gun Module, better known as a Cannon. What looks like thin tendrils emerges from his left hand to collect and absorb some of the ground-up bone meal that is left all around the battlefield. Air is compressed and the Oxygen within extracted as a liquid, the calcium phosphate bone meal is remodeled into projectiles made of the same material as the bones of the Infected, triglyceride fuel floods the Chamber behind the projectile as the Liquid Oxygen is injected into the fuel to form a highly explosive charge of frozen triglyceride powder soaked in concentrated Liquid Oxygen.

John Harper aimed the cannon at the swarm of Fliers circulating the spire attacking Kaiden Alenko, and then triggered the electrical ignitor located on the breech of the barrel.

Feathers flying down like snow falling from the winter sky, torn wings and broken beaks raining down from the sky as the projectiles, each traveling at a speed over 2450m/s, smashed into their lightweight bodies and turned much of it into a cloud of expanding hot plasma, brilliant blue flames from the escaping combustion gasses hotter than the chamber of a rocket engine that propelled the projectiles become almost continuous as the Conventional Gun Module spews projectiles at a rate of less than 100 milliseconds per round, each projectile turning a Flyer into a burst of hot plasma and a cloud of various bird remains and feathers on impact.

"How does my specially-tailored varmint rounds taste like traveling at mach 7.2 Elizabeth F***ing Greene? Such a shame that you couldn't catch them intact nor dodge them in time with muscles as lame and primitive as your Hive Zombies had!"

Tendrils emerges from John Harper, catching each piece of the falling debris and adding it to John Harper's Biomass/fuel/propellant supply to offset the massive drain of energy almost 1 MJ/s and biomass almost 0.025 kg/s, while the bony remains, things that are normally rejected during Consumption, are also absorbed to be used to form the projectiles that takes away 0.03 kilograms of calciferous material per second. The vein-like structure of the Evolved body in weapon-bearing form, which normally gives off a mild blue glow from certain type of catabolic process that involves oxygen, have also changed to giving off a nearly crimson, unbearably hot incandescence that almost looks like a air-distorting flame that had enveloped John's body as waste heat of more than 350 KJ/s is expelled from John Harper's metabolism through multiple (literally coolant-flowing) channels and means.

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.3, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Command Line-

-Settings-

-NppCompile++ 1.0.2-

-IDLE 6.2.4-

-Energy 5218.37 MJ EP 101/250-

-167/192 kg-

-Overheating-Core temperature 67.84C/340.99K-

-Administrator Access-

In the middle of the gunfire and carnage of the Infected Fliers that attempted to get to him yet stalled short of range by John and Ashley, Kaiden Alenko have finally reached the bulbous structure where the speaker horns/speaker complex was located on. Pulling out one of his clawed hand from the tentacular substrate, he sliced into the main structure of the bulb like a logger cut into a tree trunk with his chainsaw. The membranous exterior of the air-filled sac is hardly tough or durable, and it got shredded into pieces like paper under Kaiden's attack. Jets of air, methane and other eldritch gasses escapes the ruined air-sacs, and the sounds emanating from the horns have started to distort and weaken, finally stopping silent as the entire bulb-like structure supporting them is cut off of the spire by Kaiden Alenko's sharpened iron-sulfur claws, jets of gasses and what looks like blood flowing out of the severed tubing that used to connect the membranous components of the Speaker Complex to the inside of the Spire. The Infected Fliers that encircles the Spire and Kaiden Alenko start to lose organization, many of which started to escape from the Carnage of tendrils and gunfire in vicinity of Kaiden himself.

Not stopping yet, Kaiden Alenko proceeds to cut even deeper into the structure of the spire right below the speaker complex, wounding it deeper and deeper as numerous tendrils, same as the ones an Evolved uses to consume large organisms while it's still alive, sprout from Kaiden's body and covered the surface of the freshly made cut and absorbed any nutrients and biomass that tried to repair the cut, into Kaiden's own reserve of Biomass. As Kaiden cuts through the fleshy parts of the tentacular Spire structure of the Hive, a material that resembled the metallic claws of Infected Hunters and Brawlers have emerged from beneath the squirming red flesh of the Hive's Spire.

Pulling out a piece of machine tooling Kaiden have recovered from an abandoned warehouse during his transit to Portland from his body using his spare left hand, the metallic components of His hands/claws forms a socket around the hardened carbide tip, holding the tool in place. Sparks starts to fly as Kaiden Alenko starts to vibrate the Carbide tool extremely quickly while pressing the tip onto the metal; the same Iron-Sulfur based material unable to compete with industrial carbide in hardness, and a large, horizontal cut starts to appear on the metallic core.

Infected shivering and trembling, Fliers disoriented and crashing into the local structure, Walkers and Runners gradually loses their organization and start to roam and run aimlessly, more and more so as Kaiden continues to cut through the reinforced metallic interior with the Carbide tool, severing neural and electrical connection within.

Infected almost completely disoriented and their formation broken down, the Speaker-bearing upper half of the Spire snaps off the rest and fell down from the top of the structure, Kaiden Alenko leaped down from the severed root of the spire to catch the speaker-bearing top half of the spire as the same time as the two Synthetic Juggernauts torn the lower jaw of the Hive's mouth-like entrances/exits off the rest of the structure using a final pull of a grappling hook remodeled from the more traditional wrecking ball fists that got stuck to the severely weakened, and now dislocated, jaw structure; revealing a gaping hole behind.

Tendrils and black mist pours out of Kaiden Alenko's body and completely envelops the severed top half of the spire in their 100 meter fall towards the ground, shredding and completely absorbing the structure into Kaiden Alenko's body, who crashed into the earth in a mist of metal dust, bone meal and serum-like fluids that were rejected during the consumption process.

An Evolved that falls from such a high distance, except when specifically planned and changed his/her body structure to accommodate the impact, usually lands in a "splat" that have to pull themselves back together within the first few 10s of seconds before they can raise up and start to move again- Unmodified cellular biomass is simply not strong enough to handle such a fall as a rigid body. However, in this time, after the mist have dissipated, Kaiden Alenko can be seen completely Intact-no reassembly required.

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.2, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Command line-

-Settings-

-Code editor-

-Energy 4811.14 MJ EP 345/511-

-168/168kg-

-Full access-

The ability of forming a nearly rigid skeletal structure that made of the same material as the blades they usually manifest from Mutated Limbs, a structure that allow Evolved to withstand extreme accelerations and heavy impacts without shattering in a splatter of biomass that have to reassemble, is now acquired by Kaiden Alenko from his consumption of a Hive Communications Array and the high-strength metallic core within it. A trait that will be shared among the Evolved, or New Humans as they would they eventually call themselves in their first contact with aliens in a not-so-distant future.

James Heller went inside the Hive, along with the 5 Synthetic Hunters and the rest of the Team, through the opening the team just torn into one of the "Mouths" of the Hive itself. The 2 Synthetic Juggernauts, other 5 Synthetic Hunters and the rest of the Synthetic Infected they brought along, was left outside under the command of Kaiden Alenko, to guard the entrance from other Infected that may attempt to go into the same opening in an attempt to attack the team from behind.

After carefully leaping across an opening that leads to a pool of digestive fluids/enzymes/acid, the Team found themselves inside a massive cavity overgrown with flesh and biomass. Infested Pustules, thousands of them, each harboring an incomplete Walker, Runner (special Infected/Zombie from [PROTOTYPE] 1 that runs quickly), Hunter, Brawler or Juggernaut, arranged onto the walls neatly in a hexagonal pattern.

"This many Infested Pustules... When fully active with sufficient feed of Biomass, this facility alone could make 10s of thousands of Higher Infected and more than one million Walkers and Runners in a single day..." Said John Harper.

"That is why we have to destroy this place. And also to use that thing to spread our agent of liberation toward any of the survivors within this 50-kilometer radius."James Heller walked toward a large, membranous structure that is roughly cylindrical, and seems to be connected directly to the spire on top of this Hive. The spire which is now chopped down and deactivated by Kaiden Alenko who was now on duty to guard our team from any stray Infected that happens to wander across the now wide-open entrance to the inside of the Hive.

H1 cut open the first layer of the membrane, revealing a pulsating layer of flesh beneath.

H2 cuts a hole into this layer of flesh, revealing a layer of metal beneath.

John Harper summoned his Cannon module, a burst of projectiles shot into the metallic structure, pits and holes appears as the iron-sulfur based structure is shattered and vaporized by the hypervelocity impact. After 30 seconds of sustained fire, a hole appeared on the layer of metal as the central part of the structure released from and fell out of the rest of the metallic wall, revealing what looks like an oversized heart in the middle of the cylindrical structure, pumping what seems to be fluids and gasses up and through the entire Hive. However, the heart-like structure seems to have slowed down considerably, as majority of the fluids and gasses have spilled out from the severed end of the spire, and much of the spilled fluids have already been consumed by Kaiden Alenko when he cut down the Speaker Complex that used to be the tip of the Spire.

-VirNT ver 3.0.1 rev2.3, Xwin ver 4.5.3 by Marcus d'morpheus-

-Payload Secure-

-0.5 m from Target-

-Command Line-

-Settings-

-Code Editor-

-CompileX V0.1.1-

-GenDBG V-

-Energy 5891.44MJ EP 102/250-

-201/255 kg-

-Full Access-

deliver Payload site=RARM

James Heller stabbed into the large Heart-like structure with his crescent blade, a small amount of what seems to be black mist, or fluid, into the structure's interior. The mist quickly starts to expand, the reddish fluid flowing through the structure turns black, the entire inside of the Hive start to wither as the black mist envelopes everything organic inside the Hive. As the entire hive is enveloped inside the black mist, the massive superstructure starts to collapse around a single point that used to be where the heart-like structure was.

The majority of the Hive's biomass was infected with a retroviral agent that forces it to make the viral components that will be used to deliver the DFEV SC3/L3b system to the surrounding city of Portland and towns nearby from the cells' own biomass, destroying them in the process turning them into the black mist; While another component of the DFEV SC3/L3b payload forces the "heart" component and the selected few cells within the core of the Hive to convert it's biomass into a highly explosive organic peroxide material, depositing it inside the interior of the "heart". As the virus-bearing cells are compelled to move toward and surround the core of the Hive that is now turned into a bomb, the amount of the organic peroxide agent inside the converted core reached critical mass, while the team of Evolved lead by James Heller escape the now collapsing Hive from the multiple openings created by the failing superstructure.

A brilliant flash of bluish light illuminated the night sky above Portland, the virus-laden cells are ruptured by the shockwave as they could no longer contain the burgeoning DFEV SC3/L2b agent inside them, the power from the blast of decomposing organic peroxide disperses the Virus into the air in a mushroom cloud of a misty, black substance that will spread into the surrounding circle of land 50 kilometers in radius.

-Welcome User-

-This is the WinBOS 95/98 biochemistry/molecular biology operating system created by GenTek John Connor-

-Follow the tutorial as we teach you how to navigate the GUI/HUD and use the basic, ancestral features of the WinBOS operating system-

-You have been evolved-

The Liberation of the human survivors from the constant threat of Redlight/Elizabeth Greene/Nature have begun in the greater United States.

CODEX:

Biting off more you can chew-how to store Incompressible biomass in limited space of the human-like Evolved body.

Since it's conception, the DFEV SC3/Blacklight system have been designed to obtain the genetic information, code/trait upgrades and matter/energy it operates on using Endocytosis following the physical deconstruction of the living organisms/food particles/information carriers on demand-the "Consume" feature that is ancestral to all versions of DFEV SC3/Blacklight that was fundamentally derived from the Redlight virus that created the infestation on Earth. Most forms of Blacklight beings are designed to be able to consume organic materials at least twice the size of their own at once, assimilating it's energy/Biomass components and genetic information as it does so.

However, the apparent ability of a Blacklight being to fully consume an organism several times more voluminous and more massive than itself without a change in appearance or apparent volume raises an important question-How could one store all that matter when the main components of Biomass-organic compounds and water, can not be compressed down in any meaningful manner at all?

The answer lies in water, just as the problem:

First, what you would assume to be empty parts of any Blacklight being, like the chest/abdominal cavity, the spaces beneath their clothes, the spaces that would be normally occupied by the lumen of vital organs like the volume of the lungs, the digestive tract, etc, can be used and are being used by the Blacklight being as space for storing the excess Biomass they obtain from Consuming something inside-the often spacious, loose-fitting clothing of an Evolved is in fact just a mean to conceal the cargo space for their Biomass reserves just beneath the clothing;

Synthetic Infected, like the Synthetic Hunters and the Synthetic Brawlers/Juggernauts, are also largely empty on the inside-the space inside their voluminous bodies are perfect for storing the excess Biomass within.

Second, what you would normally consider to be living Biomass is largely Water-up to 70 percent of a Human's body mass is occupied by Water. Since Water is not a nutrient and does not contain any energy, when a Blacklight being Consumes a normal organism, it uses Reverse Osmosis to desiccate the input of Biomass and instantly get rid of up to 7/10th of the excess volume that were occupied by the water that used to be the majority of mass and volume of the victim.

Third, Blacklight is a picky eater-anything that is not in immediate deficit of the Blacklight Being is rejected and excreted during the process of Consumption-most prominently, the mineral content of the Bones, which comprises of between one third to half of the desiccated mass of an animal, as well as all the hair, nails, gut contents and other things that aren't considered edible, are usually discarded as a finely ground-up powder, so does most of the dissolved salts and special metabolites like pigments and excess Cofactors (Chlorophyll, Heme and Bilirubin) which is excreted with the Water that gives the liquid remnants expelled from the Consumption of an organism coloration similar to that of blood serum. These processes compresses the volume of the Desiccated Biomass down a further factor of 1.7 to 2.

Fourth and finally, during and immediately after the Consumption of any living organism, a Blacklight being performs a series of largely anaerobic, catabolism driven anabolic reactions that further compresses and upgrades the Consumed Biomass into Fatty acids, Glycerol and other dense forms of material/energy storage, like Cytosine-Guanine for storing nitrogen, Ammonium Polyphosphate for storing Phosphorus, Iron Sulfide for Iron and Sulfur, etc. Due to the prototrophic requirement imposed during it's early development, Blacklight cells are designed to be able to synthesize all the Amino Acids and Cofactors from any sources of their constituent atoms and a source of energy, nullifying the requirement to acquire or carry bulky, energetically less dense essential nutrients like Essential Amino Acids, Essential Fatty Acids and Vitamins.

By converting the Biomass into a form that is more dense and less bulky for their contents of Atoms and Energy, Biomass that DO get assimilated is is further reduced down anywhere from half to two ninth of their original volume as their energy content is concentrated and their atom/energy carrying density is upgraded-of the maximum mass of an Evolved which is, on average, between 150 to 250 kilograms, only about 20 to 35 kilograms are the actual active cells that performs all their life functions, and the rest is normally consisted of a high density storage medium that is structurally very similar to a mixture of variable ratios, Adipose tissue, Egg yolk, cooking oils and/or milk powder.

By using all the strategies combined, a typical Evolved can consume about 16 times his/her apparent mass before becoming Critical, or full. By allowing their size to change in a subtle manner that is difficult to detect without the use of instrumental measurement and comparison, they can squeeze in perhaps one or two more, before reaching saturation and starts to reject Biomass when Consuming more "food". With that in mind, however, a Saturated Blacklight being can still Consume sources of food to obtain it's genetic/structural information, and/or to obtain the fresh/immediately usable sources of energy and/or materials(nutrients and minerals/chemicals) to repair themselves.

CODEX: Synthetic Infected, or Synthetics

Synthetic Infected, or Synthetics, are non-sentient constructs produced by the Evolved using the same type of Biomass as themselves, with a pre-installed blueprint to guide the self-assembly of the Biomass into whatever design as specified, and a Virtual Intelligence (V.I.) installed inside the computer cores and other computation-capable components of it's Biomass to act as the controller instead of a full conscious mind.

Synthetics can be either remotely controlled or semi-autonomous, and are often models the body design of the Infected for optimized function and capabilities-For example, the design of a Hunter is used as autonomous ground drones, the design of a Brawler ised as ground vehicles, and the design of a Juggernaut used as the carriage frame of heavy equipments. And the manipulator arms commonly used in many of Blacklight/New Human/Evolved industry are derived from the design of the Infected Hydra, with the required tools placed in the place where the Hydra's graspers used to be.

given enough Biomass, an Evolved can summon Synthetics at will as long as he/she had the design blueprint/code in his/her databanks, and unlike other Evolved or Blacklight Individuals, Synthetics can be re-absorbed into the body of an Evolved once it's job have been finished. (this critical upgrade means that the "Pack Leader" ability is no longer a one-time expense in Biomass-the mass could be recovered once the ability is cancelled.)


	4. Chapter 4

**Carbon Wars: 2026-2030**

(About the non-canon plot of the previous three chapters)

(Even though originally I was planning to stick to Prototype canon in the coloration and weights of the Infected and the Evolved-red glowing streaks on a black amorphous, tentacle-filled mass except when under mimicry, I found too little difference in the original games about separating Redlight and Blacklight from each other to justify the activity against the Infected by both Alex Mercer in the first game and James Heller in the second-after all, the prime directive of all living organism is to survive and produce offspring, and I personally found that the In-Game explanation of Alex Mercer/James Heller's hatred toward the "same" virus that created them in the first place will be unjustified in an evolutionary standpoint, especially for Alex Mercer, who is claimed by Canon to BE the virus itself. For the Hive-Mind explanation of the games as canon, the strange stand-point of the In-Game player character is even more bizarre, as Prototype canon both claimed that the Virus that caused the outbreak on Manhattan New York had a form of Hive mind, and later the in-game wiki claimed that BOTH Redlight and Blacklight had the same Hive Mind across their entire species-which means that it would be impossible for Alex Mercer to be able to fight the Infected in defiance to the Hive Mind and destroy the VERY HIVE ITSELF that was implied to be, even if not the actual location of the Hive Queen, at least to be extremely important unit of the Infected Hive Mind in the first game, and especially for James Heller to fight Alex Mercer and murder his own creator-as this would be a form of infighting that wouldn't be permitted at all by any forms of Hive-Mind. And the act of both Player Characters are seemed to be focused on ERADICATING the infection-the equivalent for suicide for a Sapient, Hive Minded virus. Hence my explanation that separates the Redlight and the Blacklight-to fit logically both for the very Gameplay of the TWO Prototype Games and in an evolutionary biological stand point-The Infected that you fight in both games were controlled by first Elizabeth Greene and then PARIAH, and are part of the Hive-Minded Redlight species, while the Player-Controlled Alex Mercer and James Heller belongs to the faction of Blacklight, which is not a part of the Hive Mind. And as it was shown as the main plot of the second Game, James Heller, an Evolved created by Alex Mercer, is able to not only defy, but can fight against and ultimately defeats and EATS Alex Mercer alive, it's clear that there are enough Individuality within the Blacklight species to the point that Infighting and OVERTHROWING the Hive Queen is possible-for a Hive Minded race it would be the equivalent of ants or bees Killing and Eating their OWN QUEEN-completely illogical and suicidal in an evolutionary biology stand point. Also, the games seems to suggest that Redlight is at least partly Natural in origin-further strengthening the doubt of the In-Game explanation of the activities committed by Alex Mercer, which was supposed to be the source of the Infected Outbreak, which was then shown to be lead by Elizabeth Greene or MOTHER-but Elizabeth Greene were supposed to be the only one left un-zombified by the Hope Outbreak of the Redlight virus.)

(So here is an Explanation that is not the completely illogical and Gameplay-level incorrect in-game wiki explanation: The original Outbreak in Manhattan New York was caused by the containment breach of Elizabeth Greene, who spreads the Redlight virus across much of the city's Biomass in an attempt to create her own Infected Kingdom-Hive Mind, Alex Mercer, who witnessed the Outbreak, stole and released his modified, non-Free Will Destroying strain, called Blacklight into the city in hope to gather an resistance seeing the failing efforts of the Military in containing Elizabeth Green and her army of Infected, turning himself into the Player Character we control in the first game in the process, and, in canon, Consumed Elizabeth Greene in a heated fight in downtown Manhattan. Then, in the second game, Alex Mercer himself thought that the "Evolution" he imposed on the many chosen ones in New York to be the right next step of Human evolution, and started the second Blacklight outbreak(Redlight?) in New York and created his own Hive Mind of Infected and Evolved, but due to the intrinsic defect in Blacklight (It does not destroy Free Will), one of his Evolved, James Heller(Note that he does not Glitch when Shapeshifting or Consuming someone, a property shared by the Evolved but not found in the Prototype Alex Mercer), is able to defy the will of the Hive Mind, fighting it's forces in vengeance and ultimately defeat and Consume the Hive Mind's leader/Queen, Alex Mercer, disintegrating the Infected Hive Mind itself. And eradicating the Infection of Manhattan as the result.)

(About the coloration of the Evolved during different mental/physical states)

(In order to show this discrepancy in the original Gameplay and the In-game wiki, the origin of Blacklight, as well as it's manifestation and property is completely rewritten and redesigned in order to give them enough difference to justify the two Games and this work itself.)

(First off, Blacklight is no longer a virus-It is an Operating System that were developed by GenTek Alex Mercer to catalyze Human Evolution-an operating system that allows one to operate on his/her genes the same way one could program a computer, with his/her mind; Effectively grants infinite potential to evolution and solve the ever-present threat of the Fermi Paradox Great Filter (of stagnation limited by brain-power) by allowing Humanity a chance to reach Technological Singularity-A technology that directly increases the ability of the user of said technology to develop new technologies, something that allows Recursive Improvement of one's technology and one's ability to develop new technologies. For the extent covered by this work, you can think it as the Human equivalent of the Omni tool of the wider galaxy.)

(Second off, the word "blacklight" means an Ultraviolet lamp that are normally used to excite UV-active fluorescent compounds in various different applications from forensics to making you look cool in a nightclub dance-pool. Hence the Bioluminescence color of a Blacklight creature/being: An almost violet, dim bluish glow when they are idling/not in use; An orange-yellow luminescence/fluorescence when their metabolic process reaches over 50 percent capacity, like when they are thinking, or are deploying their Bio-weapons during a fight; And lastly, a Crimson-red incandescent glow when their internal temperature reaches over 53C/326.15K indicating their internal cooling systems are now active. This stage is reached often during extended fights, or during the process of one Consuming something. This stage is also accompanied by the warped distortions around their bodies/tendrils as the air surrounding them is heated up to oven-like temperatures from the waste-heat removed by their cooling systems. Original idea comes from the Androids of Detroit:Becoming Human-their LED changes color according to the same pattern following their internal (emotional) states. An example of this pattern of change can be seen on the Cover Image. Here it is Kaiden Alenko, during the fight on the Spire of the Hive in Portland Texas.)

(The Color-Coded emotion-luminescence system of the Evolved will be used extensively in the following updates; Enjoy~)

(For any Stellaris players out there, you probably could be able to make out this war as being a war between a Driven Assimilators machine empire and a Ravenous Hive hive mind :p)

(Talk about Evil vs Evil. Necessary evil? I don't think so. After all, it was Stellaris that first lets us players to play as a "Villain" empire in more traditional games...)

(I don't Own Stellaris. Ask Paradox Interactive for more explanation on this subject.)

(Don't blame me, Blame the Fermi Paradox.)

(See The Threebody Problem: Dark Forest for the details on why there can't be peace in the cosmos. At least in Real Life it is (Without faster than light travel).)

(Tools aren't good or evil by themselves. The ones that uses it are. None of the main factions, Elizabeth Greene or the Evolved, are inherently good or inherently bad. It all have to boil down to the stand-point of who we are and what we are. We Humans in Real life is not a Hive Mind. And this is a Mass Effect story after all. Individuality is necessary for proper "Interaction" with anyone in the mass effect Universe. Nobody would First Contact the Rachni because a Hive Mind can not talk nor interact to Individual-based civilizations and vice versa. Look up the Mass Effect CODEX for the Rachni wars for more details.)

(Author signing out.)

**15 Apr 2016**

As DFEV SC3/L3.x are spread across much of the United States, the newly found civilization of Evolved/Blacklight found themselves in the middle of a heated war against Elizabeth Greene and her army of Infected: One that is not just ideological, but also that of survival and for competition of resources-as both Infected/Redlight/Elizabeth Greene and Evolved/Blacklight/Hew Humans mainly use carbon-based biotechnology/nanotechnology as their main form of technology (biology?) ; the element Carbon, the Element of Life and the basis of technology of both faction, are suddenly found itself to be the object of both faction/species's insatiable hunger.

Jack Harper, leading a team of four with new SC3/L3 Evolved Marcus Wright, Jacob Taylor and Miranda Lawson, disembarks from the Founding Town of Detroit into the Infected stronghold of Ottawa, Canada, in a quest to obtain the ability of most Earth life to fix Carbon from thin air-the ability knows as Photosynthesis.

Elizabeth Greene, in her conquest to "make Nature whole again", as reported by the still-functional Keyhole satellite, have set up multiple Genetic labs/Nature reserves on the southern border of Canada, in an apparent project of studying, assimilating and implementing the traits of non-metazoan lifeforms. Like Plants.

And the objective of Jack Harper and his team is to raid the most heavily guarded Genetic laboratory/Nature reserve just south of Ottawa-the former Royal Botanic Gardens of Canada that is now turned into a Hive/facility that focuses upon the study of plants and their Photosynthesis by Elizabeth Greene/ the Infected. The only place near the United States the Evolved know about that indicated the presence of Plastids on satellite. Their goal: use the newest trait/ability gained from Consumed Infected Fliers-the Winged Form to approach the Infected facility/Hive by air and land on the center of the Plastid-containing parts of the Redlight biomass, Consume as much of the Plastid-bearing materials as possible, raid and obtain any recorded research materials, Genetic or not, of the Redlight/Infected's progress of cracking the process of photosynthesis, fight their ways out of the facility/Hive and come back alive.

-Altitude:12500 m/41010 ft-

-Speed: 1015.5 km/h / 282.1m/s / mach 0.827-

-Energy: 3514MJ ; 128.99/255kg-

-450.5/828.81 km ; GPS signal nominal-

-Boeing 737/747 flight control ver rev3-

Roar of ramjets streaks across the winter sky as the team of four cruises across the old Flight Path of the Detroit-Ottawa airline.

First using a wing structure derived from the Fliers John Harper and Ashley Williams shot down during the liberation of Portland to lift off and accelerate to velocities sufficient for the Human technology-derived High Speed Cruising Ramjet engines to start to work and produce functional thrust, the Ramjets on the team's Winged Form are then ignited to produce sustained thrust to power the rest of the flight.

A fine mist of Triglyceride fuel is burned in a specially designed cavity lined with a Diatom-derived-Infected Runner-derived Silicon Dioxide-Aluminum Oxide ceramic originally used for the Bladed appendages of the Infected Runners and burned using the flow of air compressed by Ram deceleration/Ram pressure as it enters the cavity and slows down; the resulting high temperature high pressure combustion gasses are then expanded through a de Laval nozzle situated at the back of the ceramic combustion chamber at a much higher velocity than the velocity of the air at the intake, producing an imbalance of pressure and momentum; and therefore thrust.

At this altitude, none of the Infected' means of attack, even Fliers, can reach Jack Harper's team-most mammalian lungs and avian lungs, the principle respiratory organs used by the Infected, stops working at an altitude of 7000m to 8000m. the highest recorded flight using Avian lungs-powered muscle contraction, peaks at 11300m. Still more than 1.2km lower than the height Jack Harper and his team are currently cruising at. At this altitude, any of the Infected, which are known to only be using these forms of lungs, will stop being able to exchange gasses with the rarefied air, and would at least lose all strength and power, even die, due to the resulting hypoxia. The Evolved, on the other hand, uses a complex network of automatically adapting and remodeling channels, fans and pumps to pass the life-giving oxygenated air directly from their surfaces into the vicinity to their active cellar biomass, taking the waste heat with it as the spent air is exhausted from the other ends of the channel system. This unique system of gas exchange and respiration allows them to function with an oxygen partial pressure less than 1 percent of the normal atmospheric pressure-an Evolved can breath just as normally as he/she can breath at sea level up to an altitude of more than 20000m/65616.8ft.

-Target in range: 110.15 km-

-Descending-

-Energy: 1121.27MJ ; 61.58/255kg-

-718.66/828.81 km-

-Cabin service will now stop and the lavatories will be closed; please fasten your seat-belt. Put your seat-backing to an upright position and stow your armrest.-

-Boeing 737/747 flight control ver rev3-

(Yes. They are using a legacy Autopilot software taken from a Boeing 737 interstate airliner to guide their flight to Toronto.)

-Autopilot is now OFF-

Jacob Taylor: "I can see the target."

Marcus Wright: "So...green. Never seen this kind of colors back in the U.S."

Jack Harper: "Remember that our objective is to land onto the green patch, raid the Hive/research facility there and get a sample of the photoautotrophs' Plastids and get the h*** out of there as soon as possible. You can have all the green you can see once we get this sample back to Detroit and get our own photosynthesis going. Trust me, once we finished this mission you probably will start to get nauseous looking at anything green anymore."

Miranda Lawson: "Shutting down Ramjets. Forming impact penetrator. Wings stowed. Impacting target in 10,9,8,7,6..."

The four Evolved shifted their forms in midair: the now useless Ramjet engine is shut down and dismantled into it's constituent Silicon Dioxide-Aluminum Oxide particles, which is then relocated to the tip of the rapidly falling airframe/body and formed into a hardened cone-shaped penetrator. Elastin and collagen fibers anchors the small fragments of ceramic together to form a composite that is harder than tungsten yet stronger than maraging steel-but with a density similar to that of aluminum. High-strength fibers made of fibroin/spidroin, highly crosslinked, desiccated elastin and tandemly duplicated, highly crosslinked and head-and-tail-less collagen formed and threaded through all their biomass, strengthening it from getting pulped by the extreme deceleration. Wings contracts and disappears into the airframe, leaving behind only small control surfaces that guided the fall. The core cellular biomass of the four Evolved compresses together and eliminates the air-filled channels and gaps between the cells, forming a solid,hardened mass that is highly resistant to being accelerated/compressed/subjected to the deceleration of an impact from nearly mach 1.14 to zero.

A loud Bang shook the Hive/research facility at Royal Botanic Garden Ottawa followed by a loud crack that raises up from the point of impact to the sky seemingly ending in nowhere. The outer shell of the Hive now had four round holes in it, and the four Evolved that impacted the Hive emerges from their scorched, conical protective shells that are now stuck to it's center, leaving the Biomass on the Hive/Facility's inner walls peppered with tens of thousands of sharp ceramic fragments.

Jack Harper have landed on the lowest floor of the facility. Maybe he was just lucky, or because of the advanced guidance system wrote by the more advanced Jacob Taylor improved his aim at the core of the facility; the core of the Ottawa facility is just in front of his eyes. The Core is almost the same as the one encountered in the Hive of Portland-a heart-like structure with glowing red fluids flowing through it.

There were also very little guard guarding it, either. It seems that Elizabeth Greene went too optimistic about the facility's design, and thought that just sealing the Core chamber off from the rest of the facility is enough. Which, apparently, didn't stop something that is made of reinforced silicon aluminum oxide and impacted the Facility at mach 1.14. judged by the series of holes on the floors above him which he can see the sky through them.

"The Penetrator design worked. Almost too well."

Jack Harper did not hesitate in his motion however, and walked quickly yet casually toward the Core, forming a blade/syringe out of Andalusite from one of his arms, and stabbed into the Core, or Heart, of the facility.

Specialized pumps inside Jack Harper's arm spun to action as the red, glowing fluid is sucked from the Facility's circulatory system into Jack Harper's body from the thousands of miniature holes positioned on the ceramic blade/syringe, the energy-rich material is consumed immediately and fills up Jack Harper's biomass/energy reserves that were almost depleted from the extended flight, and from the irrecoverable losses from the formation and shattering of the Silicon dioxide/ Aluminum oxide protective shell during his descent/impact. The genetic material inside the cells that were in the Hive/Facility's blood are analyzed and sequenced by the DFEV SC3.x kernel biocomputer inside each and every cell nucleus of Jack Harper's body cells at the cells that made contact with the Hive's blood cells phagocytosized the incoming cell and pulled them apart, revealing the genomic material locked inside some of the blood cells. A specialized decoding software is launched with Jack Harper's [mental (command] line input), which decoded the genetic memories of this specific Redlight/Infected facility using the software developer's past experience and knowledge about it's encoding using a derivative of the Long Short Term Memory neural network that converted the genetic/neural memory based information into a format that can be read by a Human mind, or that of an Evolved.

Memories flooded Jack Harper as he decodes the structural design of the hive, Elizabeth Greene/Redlight's current research result and implementation of plant photosynthesis, the location and guard information of the Plastids-containing research samples/material and the general deployment of guard Infected within the Royal Botanic Gardens.

cd downloads

apt-get send -p -c mass=0.5

A burst of dark mist escapes from the back side of Jack Harper as half a kilogram of Viral capsids loaded with the information he just downloaded from the consumed blood cells of the Hive/Facility are synthesized, assembled and released into the air within the facility, through the holes he punched through every single floor when he landed into the Hive/Facility's Core Chamber, and ultimately captured by the other three members of the team.

Miranda Lawson: "Jack Harper have got the information we needed from the Facility."

Jacob Taylor: "let's get those Plastids and go."

Marcus Wright "..."

Jacob Taylor: "You will be relevant for this mission. but not now. Marcus."

Jack Harper: "Don't leave me down there, guys?"

Using the map Jack Harper downloads from the Core of the facility and sends to him, Jacob Taylor located the nearest piece of Plastids-bearing photosynthetic material/specimen in the facility, and activated Drill mode. A mode that is only supported by the non-humanoid shape capable L3.x+ versions, the arms of Jacob Taylor merge together to form a sturdy mount supported by a high-strength fibroin-aluminum oxide composite, while what used to be his hands formed into a large, rotating bow-shaped partial disk studded with hardened crystals of Sapphire-a crystalline form of Aluminum Oxide bonded by a mixture of Fibroin and Collagen-as the drill bit. A powerful molecular motor located between the mount and the drill bit sprang to life using ATP hydrolysis on the numerous tracks of the rotor, and the linear, bow-shaped drill bit starts to rotate, covering a large circular area in front of him.

Pushed by Marcus Wright who have docked behind him, as well by his own legs, Jacob Taylor pressed the rotating drill-bit into the biomass-reinforced walls of the facility. The Sharp leading edges of the sapphire crystals cuts up the keratin-titin based reinforcement material into tattered bits of fabric, while the hardness of the same crystals allows the rock-and-concrete base material of the Facility's walls to be scratched and ground-up like sugar in a blender. Blood and rocky debris sprayed everywhere, organic materials consumed for energy while inorganic material sprayed out as a fine dust as the two Evolved starts to bore through the insides of the facility at a steady rate of 0.05 m/s through concrete and more than 0.15m/s through soft tissue.

Chamber after chamber are breached and drilled right through, Jacob Taylor and Marcus Wright speeded through these open spaces as fact as they can ran through open terrain, shredding quite a few Infected housed inside many of the spaces, until Jacob's spinning drill-bit ground it's way through a sheet of relatively untouched ceramic tiles-they have breached into one of the Royal Botanic Garden Facility/Hive's specimen storage/test chambers, or better known as growhouses. Weird, helical-shaped towering vines with thousands of leaf-like frondlets protruding from them dotted the chamber, each with some difference in color, vine height and thickness, leaf shape and size.

Jacob Taylor drilled through and Consumed each one of them, protocols regarding the handling and utilization of the Plastids downloaded from the Facility's core and sent by Jack Harper implemented by each of the specialized Phagocytes captures and stores the Plastids until the cells themselves have became enormous blobs stuffed with Plastids of all colors, before being stored deep inside Jacob Taylor's body. Marcus Wright have also captured much of the Plastid-bearing material and stored it inside his body.

"Plastids Secure. It's time to get out of here."

Jacob Taylor changed his direction of motion, and started to tunnel out from the Facility/Hive. Miranda Lawson followed them through the tunnel the two have drilled through the facility. A hole of which have started to close up in front of her.

-Energy 7808.85 MJ EP 452/500-

-245/245 kg-

cd ../..

cd system

cd Installer_packages

apt-get deliver DFEVSC3-L3b_ -exponential=true -mass=0.5 -site=RARM

After fully downloading the database of the Ottawa Royal Botanic Garden Facility from it's core and stuffed himself full with the energy-rich fluids that circulates throughout the Facility's core, Jack Harper delivered a package of DFEV SC3/L3b into the facility's biomass from it's core. Once again, the invariant component of the Redlight virus is exploited, and the Hive's biomass is of no match to the viral delivery system of DFEV SC3/Blacklight in terms of immune system capability. A dark mist starts to diffuse through the numerous "Veins" of the Facility/Hive's biomass, and the entire structure starts to wither and collapse into what used to be it's core as the replicating virus takes over and destroys it's cells from inside out.

Deploying grappling hooks derived from the original Infected Juggernaut's chained wrecking-ball fist structure and first developed as a pulling weapon for the Synthetic version of the Juggernaut, Jack Harper and Miranda Lawson each finds a way out of the Collapsing hive, grabbing various debris and collapsed structures using clawed hands attached to chains that replaces their wrists.

Jacob Taylor drilled his way out of the Facility, alongside with Marcus Wright.

Slicing through the few Infected that guards the facility, the group of 4 grouped together, restocking fuel using the abundant Redlight Biomass all around them, the team activated Winged Form, each forming a shield of lightweight ceramic-dried collagen-elastin-fibroin composite in the direction of what used to be the facility's core.

An explosion shook the ground as the now re-purposed core detonated with the power of nearly 100 tons of TNT, propelling the team of four, alongside with more than one thousand tons of the mature Viral vector containing DFEV SC3/L3b into the sky.

With sufficient velocity to activate the Ramjets right away, Jack Harper alongside with the other members of the team ascended quickly into the upper atmosphere, where they are safe from the tidal wave of Infected now quickly grouping around the Ottawa Royal Botanic Garden Facility which have now became a crater on the ground.

CODEX: Form Over Function: the Computer Aided Design(CAD) system of the Evolved.

Despite the apocalyptic outbreak of EHAV SC2/Redlight lead by Elizabeth Greene, and the subsequent release of the Contingency plan DFEV /Blacklight that converts the rest of the population of much of North America that haven't yet been Infected into the shape-shifting artificial organisms known as the Evolved, many, if not most of, Humanity's coding power have been completely Inherited, if not developed even further, through the need of controlling their shape-shifting bodies and the need to create and constantly develop/improve their nanotechnology/biotechnology that is needed to fight the constant battle of Survival against Elizabeth Greene/ The Infected.

Metazoan development, the kind used by the Infected and by Old Humans, are hideously inefficient, ineffective, and are simply the biological equivalent of putting already-made legos together, using a hand-controlled excavator as the only tool. This branch of science, known as Evo-Devo, is what ultimately created the phylogenetic/metabolic phenomenon known at the Great Metazoan Stagnanation that refers to the fact that the basic metabolic route of Metazoa, or Animals, have not changed much, if at all, since the Choanoflagellates that evolved into the first animals all the way up to modern times; Despite the enormous changes in the Morphology of the Phylum Metazoa (yes, the entirety of the Choanoflagellates, the Flagellate/Villate Amoeba and the Animals are classified under the same Kingdom Holozoa, which is under the same Monophyletic Superclade Opisthoknota. Talk about Specialization.)

Or at least until the Redlight Virus showed up and the resulting reaction of the Human Geneticist Alex Mercer in the (Outlawed in Citadel space) Biotechnological Company GenTek creating the entire new, artificial life-form known as the DFEV SC3/Blacklight, something that is more distant from Earth Life than is to . And proceeds to spread this artificial organism and upload all remaining Human minds into bodies formed from the DFEV SC3.x nanomorph cells constructed using their own biomass. (One of the reasons that the Citadel thought the Humans/Evolved were synthetic when they made first contact. And proceed to panic mode and accidentally made mortal enemies due to the mishap involved.)

And then what known as the Nanotechnology revolution have begun in the New Humanity/Blacklight/The Evolved controlled towns and cities of the post-Infestation North America.

Evo-Devo is too inefficient and hard to program, sure, but even back in the year of 2017 someone have already figured out how to make atomic-precision constructs using none other than DNA-the information carrier of life. Earlier constructions were symmetric-large, cage-like structures that obeys the basic symmetries of the Platonic Solids. But the ease of such construction systems became obvious, when the Scientists found out that the pattern of adhesion of the various DNA-based parts can be easily programmed-complementary sequences binds to each others using Watson-Crick base pairing, basic sequences can be defined using oligonucleotide synthesis, or through the use of Restriction Digestion and PCR from genomic DNA from organisms from Viruses to . A further understanding became apparent, when the same group of Scientists realized that the enormous combination space of even medium-sized oligonucleotide chains would allow even Human-sized or Life-sized constructs/objects/prints to be created without address clashing, as long someone can afford the cost of having to literally order billions of different long (100bp) Oligonucleotide sequences that have to be, currently, individually synthesized with an average cost of more than $0.1 per bp.

However, as the basic function of DFEV SC3/Blacklight is to bridge the thought of the uploaded mind to the genome of the Evolved body, such a problem of cost have became irrelevant and unnecessary (imagine a computer that spits DNA instead of electrical impulses as it's output). With this prohibitive cost barrier now gone, a comprehensive, easy to use algorithm to design and compile DNA-based nanotechnology of arbitrary shape was among the first to be developed, known as CADNAno (Real freeware software, albeit not as powerful in our Universe as it is in this Universe. Just look up "cadnano" on Google, and try designing some shapes of your own and see what you could use it for. Requires Maya 2012 and above to function. (Make sure to post the ideas you find designing your own nanostructures in the comments!)(Also try to post some pictures of your designs, so everyone can see everyone else' ideas.)), which allows the positioning of enzymes and biomolecules to arbitrary locations at near-atomic precision. This system, used by the L2.x versions of the Blacklight Evolved, in turn became the more advanced system of 3DS-min (not related to the game console known as the Nintendo 3DS) that came pre-installed with DFEV SC3/L3b. with the much larger storage capacity and much higher computational power, it became possible to take a polygonal 3d model, put it into an algorithm, and produce all the DNA sequences and assembly protocols directly from scratch, synthesize all the sequences, and watch your design grow out from your printing device (usually the bodies of the Evolved themselves for DFEV SC3/Blacklight) in real time. A rather useful side effect of this, not surprisingly, is the ability of nearly all New Humanity/Evolved/Blacklight constructs and technologies to heal themselves nearly instantly-anything that got torn apart or blown off will just spontaneously find their positions and bind back to the main mass perfectly toward the original design, guided by nothing more than Chemistry. And, most importantly, cut a Blacklight construct in half, the Evolved themselves included, and you get two copies of the same construct, all the machine states, neural states and mental states preserved continuously into both copies. This allows Binary Fission, the main form of reproduction of New Humans/Blacklight/The Evolved, to take place. (It was estimated that an isolated piece of Blacklight Biomass as small as an average Human fingertip contains all the information to reconstruct and grow back into the same Individual, without loss of memories/data, given adequate supply of Biomass and Energy.)

(More reference materials: "DNA Origami", "DNA Nanotechnology" on Google Academic; if the papers are behind a Paywall, search for the titles of the papers on Google Images maybe useful.)


	5. Chapter 5

**5 Oct 2026, New Houston, Houston, Texas**

Photosynthesis have been used in most parts of the United States by now-but the Plastids are brown, not green. The 3rd Prorotype Schrodinger-Higgs, the chief Evo-Devo scientist that were originally responsible for the creation of a usable version of DFEV SC3/Blacklight, using the design protocols acquired from the Raid Of Ottawa by Jack Harper and his followers, what will known as Cerberus in the coming times, spliced a photosynthetic carbon fixation cycle from a species of green sulfur bacteria into a Plastid derived from brown algae, this allows, for the first time in life's history, a photosynthetic efficiency of more than 25 percent for oxygen-evolving photosynthesis. A steady supply of Biomass is now available for every Evolved in the United States, and the plastids themselves, the Relevant programs and DNA sequences are now compiled into the newest version of DFEV SC3/Blacklight, DFEV SC3/L4i, or the International Version, as an ancestral trait-it allows a User/Evolved to stay functional indefinitely in the presence of an adequate source of light, even without a supply of Biomass/Chemical energy.

Inside the U.S. however, the newly developed system of Photosynthesis have allowed the New Humans/Blacklight/Evolved to outcompete the Infected in the term of utilization of Carbon Resources in the form of CO2 for the synthesis of Biomass-both the Infected and the Evolved have to respire or breath, and both convert organic material into CO2 and H2O in the process; but due to the high efficiency artificial photosynthesis system created by Schrodinger-Higgs of the New Humans/Blacklight/Evolved faction, once the CO2 is released, it was far more likely to be recaptured into Blacklight Biomass than it is to Redlight Biomass for the same amount of photosynthetic area, due to the former being more efficient by the square meter, in the ability to synthesize Biomass from CO2 and H2O under the same level of illumination.

Having eradicated the Infestation in the state of Texas, the Evolved starts to look for the stars-their first objective, is to spread their form of Evolution/Liberation from the Infected in the form of the newest DFEV SC3/L4i "International" to any Humans, or Old Humans as they called (That is why I call the Evolved/Blacklight faction a "Driven Assimilators" machine empire in the beginning of the previous chapter-they literally consider their form as (at least a local minimum of) perfection and forcibly assimilate everyone else into them. And their artificial genome and cellular structure are considered "Synthetic" by most of the races on the Citadel.) , on the other side of the globe, before the Infected gets to them and eats them; and to capture as much DNA into their genetic libraries from uninfected Earth Life before Elizabeth Greene and her Infected gets to them.

For the first time, the abandoned rocket manufacturing facilities left from Old Houston are once again teemed with life, thought not normal Humans wearing cleansuits as it used to be teeming with. Automated manufacturing lines that integrates both the mechanical and biological technology from before the Outbreak and the Infestation, and the molecular Nanotechnology created (Coded?) by members of the new Blacklight/Evolved Faction/Race, controlled by both automated biocomputers (really tiny, and are not brains) and the Evolved themselves, produced the parts of rockets, design of which both adopted from before the Infestation and created by the DFEV SC3 Users/Evolved/Blacklight/New Humans after the Infestation, that are then assembled using manipulator arms derived from genes and designs of Consumed Infected, and the later Synthetic Infected that are either automated or remote controlled. An old design, the SS-11 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, was used as the vehicle to deliver the Phage-based agents carrying DFEV SC3/L4i toward other continents, while the designs of what used to be the Space Exploration Technology Company, or SpaceX, called the Starship (and the Super-Heavy booster), was chosen as the mean of transporting equipment, computers, Blacklight constructs/devices, Metals and other materials, Nuclear and Biomass fuel (for bootstrapping new colonies/bases) and the Evolved themselves toward other parts of the globe, each trip taking no more than 45 minutes and no less than 30 minutes; as well as to send the first colonists toward the Moon and Mars.

**10 Oct 2026 Boca-Chica Texas**

Remains of old buildings crumble in tremors, the few remaining Infected ran for their life to escape the intense heat, Photosynthetic panels retract onto the ground to prevent wind damage, water from the Mississippi flashed into billowing clouds of steam reaching up to 6 km in height, a second sun appears in the direction of the Boca-Chica launch facility as the Biggest space rocket in the entire Human history is ignited and lifts off the launch pad in the Boca-Chica launch facility. The Super-Heavy rocket booster, with it's reusable upper stage/shuttle payload Starship, were the most ambitious plans of Human space flight, only cut short as Elizabeth Greene's Redlight Infestation scourges across the United States, destroying the entire SpaceX company in the process. Luckily, when the town of Boca-Chica was liberated, design blueprints, the full manufacturing equipments of the Starship and it's engines, the Raptor, as well as several hundred finished Raptor Engines and incomplete parts for the first 8 commercial Starships, were discovered in the holding facility, which, due to the apparent lack of edible Biomass, were left alone uninfested and undestroyed by the Redlight/Infected army. This discovery allowed the Evolved, with their mostly rebuilt manufacturing capability, to restart and complete the Starship-Super Heavy system, and achieved their first flight of the system within a year.

The Super Heavy shut down it's engines as the velocity of the combined construct reached over 2250 meters per second, detached, and cruised down toward the same launchpad for a landing. The Starship ignited it's 3 Raptor-Vacuum engines, and accelerated further and further into the empty space above the atmosphere. At 6350 meters per second, the Starship cuts it's engines, putting itself into a parabolic trajectory toward London, U.K.

The upper half of the Starship's nose cone opened up, revealing a third stage and 250 Starlink Satellites-these satellites will be deployed through the first few Starship missions to relay data across different settlements and installations of Blacklight, as well as providing a nearly-constant data linkage across every Evolved-the Internet have been restored within the DFEV SC3 Users/Evolved/Blacklight/New Humans after an outage of nearly a year and a half.

The third stage detached, it's solid-fueled apogee kick engine ignited and injected the assembly into a circular orbit 350 kilometer above ground. The stack of 250 Starlink satellites detached and was flung out like a deck of cards, solar arrays deployed, ion thrusters stopped their rotation in the course of minutes and begun the tedious process of spreading the orbit of the Starlink satellites out across the entire circular 350km orbit.

**10 Oct 2026 Principality of Sealand, North Seas, London**

A blinding ball of fire descends from the sky as the Starship ignited it's three Atmospheric Raptor engines and coursed to a landing on the small platform. A frontline base, one that over-watched the Infected ridden city of London, unpacked from the loading door of the Starship, attached itself to the platform, unfurled it's photosynthetic panels and start to grow as the CO2 from the air and the H2O from the seawater is converted in organic materials using the light of the sun. Which, in this time of year, is really "just enough" for the deployment and growth of the base.

A fuel plant that was packed inside the deployable frontline base have started it's job, converting organic material ,air and energy into liquid Methane and liquid Oxygen. The Starship is now being refueled, and will be able to launch from the platform again and return to Boca Chica Texas within about half a month.

Coming with the Starship, the first DFEV SC3/L4 User and the first non-American Evolved, Liam Kosta from the raid of Ottawa, oversees the frontline base of Sealand.

**1 Nov 2026 Principality of Sealand, North Seas, London**

Sending the Starship back to Boca Chica, Liam Kosta tried to access the Continental United States through Starlink-and it worked. Despite still being quite slow and heavily interrupted, Liam Kosta successfully sent the situation about the growth and expansion of the Sealand Base across the newly deployed 750 satellites of the Starlink Network. Equally partitioned across 3 orbits with an inclination of 53 degrees, the current network allows communication across the Atlantic ocean once, each time about 2 and a half hours, once a day. 150 milliseconds later, Liam recieved a reply from Houston: "Congratulations, the Starlink system worked."

**3 Nov 2026, London**

A bolt of blue lightning zips across the Infected hellscape of London, Hydra shredded on the bottom half leaving the top half of the tentacle writhing aimlessly on the ground, Juggernaut left with half of it's body with all it's cargo content spilling out from the still-intact front half, a circular "tunnel" punched through hordes of Walkers and Runners with biomass on the inside completely gone, leaving broken limbs and limbless Infected just outside the cylinder of destruction. Hunters fount it's stomach and guts gone, Brawlers left with just it's limbs standing in the place they used to perch on. A Hive in the distant background suddenly stopped all activity, only to reveal a smooth, circular hole right through it's center with a hole left in the place it's heart-shaped Core used to be.

Of course, at the very front end of the blue "lightning" is Liam Kosta, activated his diamond-like carbon blades, a by-product of nanomanufacturing research during the manufacturing of spacecraft Heat-shields that consists of mostly heavily glycated and crosslinked proteins, with a nanomanufactured diesel engine powering his movement and a similarly built microturbine powering the slicing motion of the blades on his arms.

Diamond-like carbon, with a Mohs hardness of 9.5 to 10, when manufactured into proper shape and subjected to high-speed rotation-vibration, cuts through nearly anything-flesh are shredded like paper in a paper-shredder, bones chopped into powder like chalk in an industrial ball-mill, concrete ground down into powder like ore in a rock grinder and metals shaved into tiny pieces like a work billet under the tool-tip of a milling machine. Running this contraption, the so-called Overclocked Blade form, however, costs nearly one Megajoule per second-hence the Microturbine powering the cutter and the the Diesel engine powering the moving mechanism, or in this case, Liam Kosta's legs. However, since most of the objects Liam Kosta cuts through in London are at least partially organic, there is plenty of Biomass in his way-which translates to a near infinite supply of energy for his harvest.

A trail of pods consists of the similar Diamond-like carbon material dragged behind Liam Kosta as he sends all the excess Biomass he did not burn up right-away into more and more storage containers that were manufactured on-the-fly, hauling the harvested Biomass behind him. Burning hydrocarbons from the incomplete combustion in the power-generating engines producing a trail of bluish flame similar to that of an after-burning jet engine, water evaporated into superheated steam to get rid of the waste heat yet the cutting edge of the Diamond-like Carbon blades still gets red-hot as the intense cutting motion converts mechanical energy into thermal energy through friction-totally expected within the working temperature range of the blades, as Diamond-like Carbon have a sublimation point of nearly 3423.5 K, and becomes harder the hotter it gets.

After collecting 31 containers of compressed, desiccated biomass from the Infected in London, Liam Kosta changed his direction, and heads offshore to the Base on Sealand. The cargo containers had a convex bottom-perfect for hauling across land at half the speed of sound, but also make excellent lifting body on the surface of water. The "Legs" of Liam's Marine form, which is not very different from that of the Overclocked Bladed form, or Blade Runner form as he preferred, functions as both a propeller and a lifting surface at these velocities-water moving at a relative speed of mach 0.5 is really not much different from concrete.

A bolt of blue lightning, the same as the one that Devastated the Infected stronghold of London, zooms across the turbulent surface of the British North Sea with 31 wagons trailing behind it, and landed on Sealand once again.

Jettisoning the now-dulled Diamond-Like carbon blades, which fell into the seawater with a satisfying "hiss" as the residual heat turns a film of of water around them into steam, Liam Kosta performed a quick collation on the Biomass he have harvested from the Infected in London-one of the 31 containers he hauled back from London is now empty as the Biomass is burned up as fuel for his return trip, and the other 30 containers, containing critical nutrients like Nitrogen, Iron-Sulfur, Zinc, Cobalt, Copper and Molybdenum as well as a large amount of energy and organic materials, are funneled into the growing frontline Base of Sealand-the current base is still too small and poor in the necessary materials to build a Harbor-Bosch Converter to fix it's own nitrogen supplies, and it will still be two harvests away before enough organic material is stocked and enough of the construction/growth is finished that the Sealand base is ready to accept another Starship.

**25 Dec 2026**

Nomatter how the Infected thought nor how brave the animal-level intelligence of one maybe, nomatter where they came from or where they want to go, they will definitely NOT try crossing Texas.

With much of Texas and the southern United States covered in photosynthetic arrays with an efficiency of over 80 percent, the space launch facility located in Texas and South Florida have reached peak capacity-the energy harvested by all the southern United States, an area of over 3.84 million square kilometers, produces over 618 TJ of energy each second, which is enough to launch a Starship-Super Heavy vehicle for every 2 seconds.

Roar of Rocket Engines, Brilliant light from the superheated exhaust, billowing clouds of steam from the Hydrogen and Oxygen that got separated in a photosynthetic facility and later recombined during an engine burn, have became the norm of the State Of Texas. Temperature reaches over 45 degrees C as the large amount of wasted energy gets converted into heat each launch, easily bearable by the Evolved but would cook any life of Old Earth into an omelet in an instant, Infected included. The Starlink system have been finished to the 50% mark, providing Internet Access for many of the Extensions and frontline bases of Blacklight/The Evolved, and even some of the surviving countries on the other side of the Earth-places like the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. Also New Zealand and Greenland, places where practically Nothing could arrive except by space once their Airports and Seaports are closed when GenTek announced a global outbreak of the EHAV SC2/Redlight/Greene Virus in 15 May 2025.

**2 Feb 2027 Manilla, Philippines**

After nearly two years of Internet failure and isolation, Donovan Hawke found that he could access the Internet using his phone again-which gives him hope that the Redlight Outbreak have been controlled, at least in the United States.

However, after a brief episode of browsing on Google, Donovan Hawke found things that, in his respect, quite disturbing.

"Which part of a Hunter to eat first?"

"DLCs: Diamond Like Carbon, the new wonder-material for making bones (and structural support?)"

"Newest Innovation in Photosynthetic Carbon Fixation"

"Starlink nearing 60 percent completion: Repeat of the Hive Mind mistake? Or new era of Information exchange within Humanity?"

"What lies on the Red Planet? Scientists say that adaptation codes for extended unprotected survival on Mars nearing completion"

"Buy one plugin, get two more"

"Genehub-the world's biggest repository of biotechnology/nanotechnology related code. Explore the frontier of Evolution with 100 million more users and code-makers all over the world."

Whatever happened in the U.S. that made the Internet back online, or Whoever that made this happen, are definitely NOT Human, or at least not Human in the eyes (and perspective) of Donovan Hawke.

Youtube videos, or at least videos he could see on the newly restored equivalent of Youtube, seems to be mostly related to gaming. Or at least what Donovan Hawke could only assume to be ultra-releastic versions of the common Video Games he used to play in the local NETcafe when he was young.

"Since when did video games become so realistic like that? The lighting... The shading... The motions and simulations of physics... Almost like Real Life." Donovan Hawke thought, the presense of a HUD, or Heads Up Display, that varies considerably from video to video, a variation that Donovan Hawke could only attribute to the videos being about different Games, make him think more that something was completely wrong about the United States-not "Wrong" in the background of a global outbreak of a sentient, all-assimilating virus, it's something that was wrong about a completely different topic. Something that was wrong about Humanity itself. Or whoever that made their way to the Root Domain Servers in the United States and brought the Internet back online. It maybe something that were derived from the Redlight outbreak. A lure of a deadly trap perhaps. Or some sort of splinter group(s) that rebels and split off their Hive Mind. Or perhaps Aliens. It seems that whatever network Donovan Hawke is able to access, is, definitely, created and actively used by someone, or something that are not Human.

Donovan Hawke could see bright meteors falling from the sky outside the window of his house.

A small piece of paper landed from the sky, looks like a flyer(advertising) with a single line of word and an option below it. The flyer appears to be animated.

Donovan Hawke picked up the piece of paper, the line of word reads "Do you want to save the world playing video games?

-Yes- -No-"

Donovan Hawke pressed "-Yes-", and fell unconscious. For a short while.

"Welcome to WinBOS 7/ME DFEV SC3/L4i, this tutorial will teach you how to navigate the WinBOS 7/ME operating system and utilize the basic hereditary abilities of DFEV SC3/L4i 'International'. You have been Evolved. A bright future of coding awaits you."

"Wait, that's not a video game! Are there an 'Uninstall' option?"

**The assimilation of the Philippines have proceeded extremely smoothly.**


	6. Chapter 6

**New Blacklight, Holminid states, and the biggest boom in the entire Human History**

**(Part 1)**

(The Cover Image have been changed to the common outfits used by DFEV SC4/L5+ individuals, or members of New Blacklight. From top to down: Technician, Assassin and Warrior (Engineer, Infiltrator and Soldier respectively). Both Blacklight Evolved and New Blacklight Individuals had gravity manipulation technology, but no Biotics in the traditional sense. More to be explained in the chapter below.)

As all surviving Human left on the earth is converted to a member of the emerging race of New Humans/Blacklight/Evolved, the Infectious aspect of DFEV SC3 is no longer needed-there aren't anything on earth that were left to infect other than ones the are already infected with EHAV SC3/Redlight/Elizabeth Greene/Infected, which, despite being edible (able to be consumed without leaving even a bone) by the Evolved, can not be Infected or converted with the DFEV system they are currently using. The Carbon Wars have entered a stalemate, yet the battle continued.

Jack Harper, one that would be called the Illusive Man in the future, announced that New Humanity/The Evolved would start to expanded toward the stars.

A new tech company, Cerberus, was created, and the first thing Cerberus did was announcing their newest update to the Blacklight OS-DFEV SC4/L5, or New Blacklight.

With an installation package of over 25.81 Gbp, it's obviously that no version of New Blacklight would fit inside any of the Retroviral agents known by man-the biggest virus, Mimivirus that infects amoebas, had a genome of around 400Mbp-more than 64 and a half times smaller than even just the OS itself, much less for any of the Applications most users would like coming pre-installed. In fact, the Genome size of DFEV SC4/L5a "N-series" is almost five times larger than the entire Human genome-good luck fitting that into a virus and have it convert a normal Human cell.

Instead, DFEV SC4/L5 was distributed digitally in a sort of bootstrap system-the first to be delivered inside the installation package is a medium-sized plasmid carries the information that is needed to build a wireless receiver that translates Starlink signals into DNA sequences and functions as the induction/transfection agent. Once the wireless receiver was finished, it sends a request on the Internet to retrieve the multiple Installation packages of the Main components of DFEV SC4/L5, translating them into multiple giant plasmids; which gets replicated many times to the desired number.

Once finished downloading the information, the wireless receiver was dismantled, and the plasmids containing the Installation packages of DFEV SC4/L5/New Blacklight are replicated to the amount that is needed to transfect and convert every cell inside that Individual, using an API interface which was delivered from the Receiver Complex using a retroviral agent earlier during the downloading of the Installation packages.

As the DFEV SC4/L5+ versions are distributed and applied as system updates for existing Blacklight Individuals, New Blacklight is not infectious toward uninfected cells like it's predecessors does, but only converts, harmlessly, cells that are already infected with earlier version of DFEV/Blacklight.-A classical example of Endosymbiosis, which genes of the symbiote gets transfered and mixed-up with the host cell and vice versa, rendering both of them inseparable from each other. In this case, it's the newer versions of Blacklight, or New Blacklight, through iterative code updates and optimization without a selection pressure for Infectivity, become integrated into the host genome and lost it's viral aspects and infectivity (Or that the host genome become Integrated to the Viral genome which turned the virus into a fully functional cell that can no longer infect other cells?), turning the symbiotic entity into somethings that are entirely different, yet completely inseparable. Just like the ancient alpha-Proteobacteria that got gobbled up by an Archaeon became mitochondria in the resulting endosymbiotic entity, turning the Archaeal host into the origin of mitochondria-bearing Eukaryotic life.

Within weeks, nearly all original DFEV SC3 Evolved have received the update, turning them into Individuals of New Blacklight-same level of individuality, significantly enhanced abilities and UI friendliness, and a wireless connection to the Internet-one that is more akin to an integrated Smartphone than to a true Hive Mind.

Due to the technological details in the implementation, New Blacklight had a different appearance to it's predecessors, both in the color of the Bio-appliances they create from limb mutation, and in the animation played when an Individual changes shape or Consumes something.

For the basics, plain Biomass of New Blacklight is an opalescent, crystalline white due to the extensive use of Diamond-Like Carbon in it's constitution, which is contrary to the original Blacklight which is a sludge-like black with metallic sheen due to the high content of Iron-Sulfur materials in their Biomass.

Second, New Blacklight have a unified, canonized construction/deconstruction system based on fractal self-assembly and chemotaxis directed targeted adhesion that works both during shapeshifting and regeneration/absorption of Biomass, which is almost instant as opposed to the mish-mash of multiple systems and assembly strategies used by the older versions, which can still take tens of seconds during the process of shapeshipting/polymorphing and consumption of other beings. (for example, Original Blacklight shapeshifts/absorbs biomass in a maelstrom of "Biomass" and a wave of tentacles, New Blacklight does it in a flash of light and a ripple of distortion. Though both produces mist during the use of these abilities, and can leave the inedible parts of their prey behind as puddles of fluids/piles of powder)

Third, the DFEV SC4/L5+ OS have an integrated 3d scanner, which can convert anything the User decides to scan into a detailed 3d model complete with all textures of that object/individual, which can be as small as about 32 to 64 Mbp instead of the Tbp sized, holographically precise, non-redundant detailed model of a Consumed individual which is used by earlier versions of DFEV SC3/Blacklight. This means that a New Blacklight Individual can turn into other people/objects without having to Consume/Absorb him/her/it first, and can store indefinitely many appearances/models as opposed to only a few that the original Evolved can store. This also have the side effect of letting a New Blacklight Individual to easily copy and reproduce most of the metal/wire based technology of the original Humans and the wider Galaxy with ease, often exceeding the original specifications widely in their own implementation.-In this respect, the Bionenomtechnological bodies/Biomass of New Blacklight Individuals are also their own 3d scanner/3d printers, giving them the frightening ability to copy and adopt technology to their own with ease.

**Mar 11****th**** 2028, Rocket Assembling Facility, New Houston, Texas**

Hundreds of manipulator arms dangled from the roof of the facility, Diamond-Like Carbon and reinforcing nanotube fibers deposited at atomic precision by the tip of these manipulator arms round by round and layer by layer using the same system that New Blacklight OS uses to assemble their own bionanotechnological bodies, parts of new Starships and sew Super Heavys, and the newest mars-capable rocket, the Zeus rocket, are being produced in a rate that even Old Human industry could not compete with.

**Mar 31****st**** 2028, Kennedy Space Center, Florida**

New Blacklight's first interplanetary mission, Ares I-Zeus, have been seated on the (newly restored) launch pad. Spray of water from the Atlantic Ocean shrouds the facility, 127 Raptor engines ejected a stream of supersonic, high-temperature combustion gasses as they are activated and ignited, and the Zeus booster lifts off the launch pad with a plume brighter than a thousand suns. Water was evaporated and turned into superheated steam, so much so that even the traditionally will-be clouds of condensation didn't show up in this launch-the extreme radiated heat from the rocket plume kept all that steam at a temperature that is above the boiling point of water, and the steam did not condense-the water under the launchpad just disappeared instead.

The booster separated from the Zeus spacecraft, cruising down for a return to launch site, while the Zeus fired it's 6 raptor vacuum engines, and continued it's course to orbit. Multiple Starship launches from Texas would dock with the now empty Zeus spacecraft and fill up it's fuel tanks, and then the Zeus spacecraft will start it's burn toward Mars.

Mars was chosen, as New Blacklight's first site of extraterrestrial colonization, because the abundance of resources needed for a Carbon-based civilization: carbon dioxide, water and ammonia in it's ice caps and underground, Nitrogen in it's atmosphere and an abundance of solar power from the thin atmosphere, as well as the fact that Mars have lowered gravity-which means that launching rockets from Mars costs far less fuel than it would cost if it was launched from Earth. Notably, both the Starship and the Zeus can launch directly from mars to a transfer trajectory toward earth with a full tank.

Why Mars if there is the Moon, many would ask. But, in, fact, even before the advent of New Blacklight and the resulting drastically increased capacity of production of the Evolved; Scientists, both DFEV SC3 Evolved and DFEV SC4 Individuals-Both Original and New Blacklight, have thought about colonizing the moon-and that idea was rejected almost immediately. The Moon had a lot of metal resources, and even carbon-but all that resources was bone-dry. There are no Hydrogen on the moon because of:

1\. The Moon was formed from an ancient Giant Impact with the earth, and as a result most of the Hydrogen inside the moon was already evaporated by the time of it's formation.

2\. The Moon is too small to hold in an atmosphere, nor is it inside of a protective magnetic field that would allow the retention of any Hydrogen on it's surface even IF some survived the initial Giant Impact and the Formation of the Moon, or have been delivered to it by asteroid or comet impacts.

Since Hydrogen is required in the formation organic compounds, any organic compounds at all, even if New Blacklight managed to colonize the Moon it could not grow-there is simply no Hydrogen that is needed for the growth of any sort of Carbon-based lifeforms at all on the Moon-Which means No Biomass to make, No growth and No colony.

**Dec 15****th**** 2028, Northern Pole, mars**

After nearly 9 months of transfer, the Zeus have finally injected to a Martian Orbit and landed on the Northern Pole of mars. The cargo bay door of the Zeus opened, and a few Synthetic Hunters emerged-these small constructs are the vehicle of choice for New Blacklight to explore the local terrain, and conduct construction work on alien environments. With a limited Virtual Intelligence to autonomously conduct most of the basic tasks like navigation or fault-managing, and easily controlled through most form of standard RC links, the Synthetic Infected are the equivalent of rovers/construction drones of Old Humans, and does the majority of Hard Work on most colonies of New Blacklight.

-Temperature 136.05K-

-Pressure 544.21pa-

-Cold Adaptation required-

-Cold Adaptation finished-

-Anaerobic respiratory pathway initiated, please pay attention to your Nitrate reserves-

-Energy 839.8MJ 256/256kg-

After a careful check on the local conditions and the Oxidizer reserves brought by the Zeus spacecraft, Matt Wattney 2 carefully stepped off the cargo bay door/loading slope on the spacecraft, signaling the other Individual, his "sister" Enix Wattney 3, to get down the ship. The reduced gravity on Mars caused everything to feel lighter, but the highly adaptable Gait Control Network of a DFEV SC4/L5a Individual quickly adjusted to the reduced gravity, and instead of bunny hops like what the Apollo astronauts used to do on the moon, the two Individuals starts to walk and run on the surface of Mars just like they would on the Earth, arguably even faster and more agile due to the reduced gravity. Also, since an Evolved does not need spacesuit to survive and operate even in a vacuum, there were little extra weight to weigh them down.

Reaching to the back side of the spacecraft, Matt pulled a handle labeled "Manual release", and another cargo bay opened. The modified Synthetic Hunters quickly reached into the opened Cargo Bay Door, and what looks like pieces and parts of machinery are now unloaded with their front arms, one Hunter carrying each piece.

Enix morphed one of her arms into a vacuum device, and sucked off some of the martian dust from the ground. After what seems like a transparent chamber have been filled with material, Enix chose a place on the ground, reforming the vacuum device into a nozzle, and start to deposit the material onto the ground. Small sparks starts to fly as Enix connected the fiber output of the Zeus's onboard laser device to her nozzle-arm, and the refracted Nd:diamond laser sintered the tiny grains together. The Synthetic Hunters that brought the machine parts recognized the newly deposited platform as a storage lot, and unloaded their cargo onto the platform.

Bringing in a sample of the local martian dust and rocks, even a core (spelunking) of the local ground (costing Matt Wattney a whooping 54.25 MJ to drill out using a modified version of diamond hole-saw) back onto the Zeus for study, Matt and Enix told the various Synthetic Infected on the ground to start assemble a Stirling Nuclear Fission Generator, a charging station, a water extractor and a fuel plant, starting the refueling process of the Zeus spacecraft.

The larger Synthetic Excavator (modified from the design of a Synthetic Brawler) they brought all the way here, exited the Zeus spacecraft, and started to collect regolith and soil from the Martian surface near the water extractor-fuel plant assembly.

Regolith is dumped into the Water extractor, electric heaters inside the extractor warmed the regolith from a frigid 138K to 273K just near freezing. The Ices inside the regolith starts to sublimate from the increased temperature and reduced pressure, and the resulting water vapors are deposited back into purified Ice on a cool surface, scraped off and melted into liquid water that gets sent to the fuel plant a pipe.

Inside the fuel plant, the water is electrolyzed into Hydrogen and Oxygen, the Oxygen gets liquefied and stored in one chamber, while the Hydrogen is reacted with Carbon Dioxide compressed from the martian atmosphere in a vat filled with methanogenic microbes-turning the mixture of gasses into water and methane. The Methane is liquefied and stored in another chamber, and the water is returned to the Electrolyzer to be turned into hydrogen and oxygen again.

-Fuel level: 0.1%/0.5% Sol-

-Estimated time of launch: 240 Sols from now-

On the Zeus, in the chemical labs, the dust, regolith and soil sample brought back by Matt and Enix are put into a series of instruments and analyzed. And the result is completely surprising.

"Look at this peak." Enix sent a message to Matt via WLAN connection.

"That is the perchlorate anion. The same stuff NASA used to use as Oxidizer for their Solid fueled Rockets." Replied Matt.

"Wait a minute, perchlorates are supposed to be quite toxic..."

"Only to Plants as far as I know. Or to Metazoa. Only to organisms that are not Redlight or Blacklight/New Blacklight as far as we know it. We should ask Earth for something that uses it as an alternative Oxidizer, so we can get rid of our burden of Nitrates we brought here."

"Ares I calling Earth: We found a large presence of Perchlorates in the Martian soil. Request enzymes that utilizes it for use as respiratory Oxidizer."

50 minutes later.

Matt and Enix walked, ran and played on the surface of Mars cheerfully and freely, without the need to worry about their Nitrate reserves or the Oxidizer reserves brought here on Zeus, as the Perchlorates in the Martian Soil have been turned from Poison to a source of free Oxidizer through the use of the new Genetic Module that got sent from the Earth by radio and implemented right here on Ares I.

**Feb 24****th**** 2029, Department of Advanced Physics, Cerberus HQ, New Detroit**

"That's so weird..."

Perceval Aiton 1, one of the many physics researchers working for the Spaceflight program of Cerberus, the colonization council of New Blacklight, whose job was to comb through the archives left in the many Universities and Data Centers from before the Infestation, experiment with any piece of technology left behind, and find the ones that worked, finds something that is completely out-of-ordinary when he was experimenting with an ancient paper titled "H(-1), a new Ultradense state of Rydberg matter for the production of Viable Fusion energy" made by Holminid back during year 2009. despite the original scientific community having mixed opinions about almost every paper created during that era, since all the scientists, save from a lucky few, have either become Infected or have been eaten by one before Blacklight could reach them and save them from that fate, the modern research about these old scientific papers were done in a completely open-eyed and equal manner-the haters can no longer hate, and the believers could no longer praise as they are now all dead.

"This result is the opposite of everything physical we knew about..."

"It seemed like that this paper, no matter how unorthodox it sounds, have made it right..."

In the center of the lab, was a large vacuum chamber with something that looked like a scale, tubes carrying multiple different colored materials and dishes inside. The smal dish on the scale had something that resembled mercury inside of it, and the readout from the load cells under the scale suggested that the material is extremely heavy despite it's small volume.

"Density measurements suggests that the material had a density of over 261 kilograms per cubic centimeter. Measuring electrical property...the material is a room temperature superconductor. That thing had property that matches the interior of many Brown Dwarfs in the galaxy. Solved a lot of astrophysical problems regarding Gas Giants and Brown Dwarfs. And I wonder what's the other uses of this material."

Inside the small dish in the Vacuum Chamber was a small sample of D(-1), a quantum degenerate material derived from the collapse of Deuterium Rydberg Matter in the presence of a magnetic field and a suitable ferromagnetic/spin catalyst. From what the original paper could tell, this strange matter forms from deuterium once the electrons are forced into a superconductive state that forms Cooper Pairs with each other. As both Deuterons and the Electron Cooper Pairs are Bosons, the Pauli Exclusion Force that normally kept the density molecular hydrogen or deuterium low, both as a solid and as a liquid, stopped acting upon the constituent particles of the material, and the material collapsed into a sort of vortex superatom, with binding energy gained from having more Electrons orbiting more Deuterons at a closer range per unit volume exceeds that is lost through the increase in electrostatic repelling force due to there being more particles packed closer together for the same unit of volume.

"The original paper suggests blasting it with a medium-energy laser pulse."

"Initiate laser fire at a target of 0.24mg D(-1) in 3,2,1..."

The laser system that is connected to the vacuum chamber fired a pulse of ultra-violet light almost 4.08 KJ in energy and hits a small vial containing some catalyst and the D(-1) adhered onto it. Perceval Aiton 1 expected a large, but not extremely large, bang as the deuterium nuclei should be easily pushed to the densities that is needed for fusion... instead, the sample seemed to vanish, releasing far more energy than he had anticipated- instead of the 137.5MJ energy yield from the fusion of the deuterium nuclei into helium, which the apparatus is built to absorb as heat, the entire sample exploded into a spray of high-energy particles, mesons, pions and kaons with nearly 31 percent of the mass of the sample converted into energy-a whooping 6696MJ instead of the original 137.5MJ, which exploded inside the vacuum chamber with the force of 1.21 tonnes of TNT, turning the entire apparatus minus the laser system (being in another, blast proof room in the facility and only connected to the labs via a series of long, narrow, evacuated tunnels), and almost five tons of various materials in the lab into a cloud of carbon vapors and puddle of molten metals and silicates in a hole on the floor, the force of the blast flattened Perceval Aiton 1 into a puddle of Biomass on the wall-which quickly reformed, pondering why the laser fire produced so much energy that it nearly blew the lab and much of the facility into the air, if not being mostly absorbed into the sturdy, high heat-of-vaporization materials the Vacuum chamber and much of this lab is built from. Forming claws of Diamond-Like Carbon and insulating himself using a layer of silica aerogel, Perceval Aiton 1 starts to carefully dig into the still hot, but partially solidified layer of lava in the bottom of the hole that used to be the floor of the lab he was assigned to.

After removing almost 2 tons of still hot melted and solidified materials, Perceval Aiton 1 reached the bottom of the pool of solidified lava, and ,to his surprise, he found the large sample of mercury-like D(-1) still pooled on the bottom of the melt. Due to the high density of the material, Perceval Aiton 1 carefully removed the sample using a spoon he fashioned on his right clawed hand, and dropped it into a small chamber he formed into one of his Diamond-Like Carbon left claws. And it instantly felt unnaturally heavy, even to a New Blacklight Individual/Evolved-Perceval Aiton fell over, face first, onto the pool of still-hot materials as he tries to rise up from a crouch during the retrieving of the sample, and burned off nearly 2.5 kilograms of Biomass that used to be his head and a decent part of the upper half of his body on the still-hot melted material. Which also happen to be the first time any Blacklight individual, Original or New Blacklight, have lost their balance and fell over their feet due to an imbalance in Gravitational forces (weight). Luckily, Blacklight tissue, especially New Blacklight like himself, regenerates most of their lost parts in seconds. So Percival Aiton 1 walked out of the now bottom-less lab with the D(-1) sample safely contained in a clawed arm-the left arm, and other body parts/clothing completely intact. Minus a few tens of kilograms of Biomass, and plus a lot of (non-Biomass) weight.

Pulling himself with the large imbalanced weight into the nearest spectroscopy lab, Percival Aiton 1 transferred the sample into a secure container, reformed his left hand, and ran a standard mass spectroscopy analysis on the small sample which have miraculously survived the blast.

"Carbon 24.5%, Iron 11.24%, Oxygen 5.5%, Uranium 0.02%, Deuterium 52.8%, Hydrogen 14.1%, Gold 0.06%, Transuranics 0.05%, Other light elements, 1.25%, Other heavy elements, 1.05%, Unknown, 0.39%."

"How did it manage to retain it's high density if most of it's components is no longer isotopes of Hydrogen?" Percival Aiton 1 uploaded the analysis results, as well as the full report of the experiment and the incident, into the Facility's Intranet. New ideas and experiments came up his mind, but the lab he just blew up in the last test definitely needs to be patched-up before any new experiments could be set up. Not exactly hard considering the fact that every New Blacklight Individual is also his/her own 3d printer, making repairs and (small scale) construction/fabrication trivial for someone with the same or higher version as Percival himself, in most cases.

**Feb 28****th**** 2029**

Philippe Shorrock 11, as well as many others, joined Percival Aiton 1's team in experimentation with the new state of matter, dubbed "Holminid matter", a state which an excess of electron orbital angular momentum formed a rydberg state where the electrons, outside in (extremely state-dense) rydberg orbirals, pulls nuclei together and forms superconducting cooper pairs resulting in an extremely dense, superconductive quantum degenerate fluid that is vastly similar to the center of a brown dwarf/white dwarf.

First, as per analysis result of the original sample that were radiated with the burst of subatomic particles from the laser-induced explosive incident and absorbed a large amount of non-hydrogen atoms from it's surrounding environment, it have been experimentally proved that the nature of the nuclei in Holminid matter does not really matter that much-Holminid matter have been created from normal hydrogen, Protium which is a fermion with the same catalysts and protocols that were used to create D(-1), resulting in H(-1) which is very similar in appearance, just with less density.

Second, as the catastrophic first experiment with this kind of matter suggests, nuclear reactions, especially the kind that makes a lot of energy, happens easily within Holminid matter, and the energy from such reactions appeared to be controllable-Holminid matter that was not directly excited by a source of excitation did not disintegrate into the shower of mesons, pions and Kaons as the parts that were exposed to the source of excitation did. Though more traditional nuclear reactions, for example, the CNO cycle, the P-P chain, and even the Triple Alpha Process, can happen in Holminid matter (as the distance of nuclei within Holminid matter is extremely small) and heat it up, often resulting in a thermal runaway and detonation of the entire mass. Nevertheless, even these reactions can be controlled. With sufficient caution and small pieces of the material instead of the bigger (milligram sized) masses to minimize the chance of propagation of the detonation from one piece to another.

Third, Holminid matter is extremely dense-almost as dense as the core of a white dwarf for most elements found on the Periodic Table. And almost as dense as the core of a Brown dwarf for isotopes of Hydrogen. Which makes it the perfect choice for compressing Biomass into the body capacity of a Blacklight Evolved/New Blacklight Individual. If not for the fact that significant energy is needed to "decompress" Holminid matter since it's usually more stable than any kinds of chemical compounds that it's constituent elements could form as normal, atomic matter. However, this energy requirement could be easily met through controlled nuclear reactions within the same sample of Holminid Matter. And the catalysts for converting Rydberg matter to Holminid Matter (and back) is also quite cheap-anything ferromagnetic with the right lattice structure for it's nucleation can function as such a catalyst. Formation of the Holminid state is mostly Exothermic, while the Evaporation (return-to-normal-atoms) of the Holminid matter is mostly Endothermic.

"Did you realize that we may have well just cracked Nuclear Fusion in this little lab?"

"Not in a massive reactor... but in a tiny test-tube."

"Not in plasma... but in Condensed matter."

"Not with expensive Tritium or with Impossible-to-get Helium-3, but with normal hydrogen and abundant isotopes of other elements like nickel or lithium."

"We have just found a source of unlimited energy for every one of us, every machine, every vehicle and every construct. All of New Blacklight. All of our tech and all of us could be adopted to the use of Induced nuclear Reactions in a high-density Holminid state. We just need a simple radiolysis product recovery pathway to turn Nuclear energy into Biochemical energy, and we now have an unending supply of power to practically everything."

"Also absorbing Biomass/Consuming entities without leaving behind a trace. Several thousand tons of material could be carried with a single Individual/Evolved. That would be the end of all aerodynamic designs we knew of, as we are no longer bound by Aerodynamics anymore."

The team of scientists have also discovered the mean to power the limbs and musculature of the Evolved and the Synthetic Infected through the formation and evaporation of Holminid matter-same principle as pneumatics/hydraulics, but with hydrogen as the working fluid and nuclear reactions that functions directly as the compressor/pump.

CODEX: pneumatic muscles/the Terminator actuation system

With the unlocking of the energy of the atom, New Blacklight is no longer limited by the availability of power or energy-which means that certain ancient ideas about robotics and actuation are finally economical enough to be used by New Blacklight Individuals and their Technology/constructs without draining their energy reserves within minutes.

One of these technology is known as pneumatic actuation, or, referred by most of Old Blacklight as "Terminator actuation" due to certain movies they watched when they were still Human, before Elizabeth Greene and her Outbreak. Which are quite accepted by Individuals of New Blacklight as well, as the original New Blacklight Individuals were created through system update of Old Blacklight Evolved or their offspring, which means that their minds are essentially identical copies of their Evolved ancestors, and by extension, Human ancestors.

Pneumatic Actuation is a quite old-school idea-after all, nearly all experiments of biomimietic robotic locomotion of Old Humans before the Outbreak and the Infestation were baased on at least some variants of Pneumatic actuation. The post DFEV Humanity, or The Evolved/Blacklight as they call themselves, largely abandoned this direction of technological research and favored Nanotechnological muscles for actuation, primarily due to the intrinsic inefficiency of the technology-most pneumatic systems had a terrible transmission efficiency of 44% to 60%, and a specific (mechanical) power source is still needed to pressurize the working fluid is still absolutely vital to the entire system-increasing weight and volume of the system drastically, especially volume, which is at premium as space imposed by the Ancestral Form of an Evolved had an (especially hard) upper limit. The ancestral form of pneumatic transmission is also subject to inherent structural weakness on the pumps(compressors), reserve canisters and transmission lines-puncture any part of the system causes a catastrophic loss of fluid and the deactivation of the entire system.

However, with the advent of Holminid matter and the nearly infinite Fusion energy that comes with it, the inefficiencies are now no longer applicable. Instead of mechanical compressors that still needs an appropriate prime mover to drive, New Blacklight uses phase change to establish the pressure difference in the working fluid-just like a steam engine. A cold, Holminid state working fluid, H(-1), is pumped, through capillary action in the superfluid, into a chamber where electrical discharges are used to excite the material to the point where nuclear reactions takes place, converting the cold fluid into a hot, high pressure gas. Once spent, the expanded working gas is made to contact a cooled catalyst bed, which converts the rarefied gas back into the ultradense Holminid state superfluid which gets pumped into the reaction chamber by capillary action once again, closing the cycle.

The structural weakness of a pressurized, connected system is overcame with Nanotechnology-the reaction chambers are made small, separate and numerous, minimizing the loss of power if one gets ruptured in an attack or is depressurized for maintenance. The pneumatic lines are fitted with numerous microscopic valves, which both function as the controll system of the actuators, and serves to isolate parts of the network if one gets ruptured, enabling quick repair with the canonized fractal self-assembly system that is ancestral to all DFEV SC4+/New Blacklight Individuals. No longer whole and complete like it's traditional counterpart, the pneumatic actuators of the Terminator actuation system is subdivided into numerous small, interchangeable, self contained units known as a pneumatocyte, nanoassembled microscopic structures that functions just like the Myocytes of Metazoa, each one having it's own separate, independent connection to the pneumatic feed network and individually controlled valves that enables both extreme redundancy and excellent resistance to ruptures, leaks and puncturing damage, in addition of being incredibly easy to repair, replace, reassemble and remodel when needed.

Additionally, in most applications, the distribution network and reaction chambers of the Terminator actuation system is actively and automatically remodeled and adapted to the changing work condition, through the use of Chemotaxis and emergent self-assembly which groups the pneumatic supply devices with the mechanisms that uses gas pressure in close proximity while automatically routing the plumbing and the valves toward a combined maximum of both redundancy and efficiency, eliminating any set points of weakness.-In general, a limb equipped with the Terminator actuation system have nearly identical damage and repair properties with one that is equipped with the more traditional Whitelight musculature system, or any of the linear nanobiomotor systems that were open-source of commercially available; While being almost 50 to 80 times stronger than any of these systems, with the only limiting factor being material strength of the walls of the system-a material strength, en bulk, that is nearly 100 times higher than a bulk strength of even the best molecular muscle actuator polymers could achieve, thanks to the extensive use of Graphene and other nano-carbon already in these static, high-strength systems. With this kind of strength, a New Blacklight Individual could literally smash through a M-55 Mako in one blow, just like in the original [PROTOTYPE] Games of 2009~2012. And stay relatively unharmed as long as they have first coated their leading edges of interaction with Graphene reinforced Diamond-Like Carbon or other kind of shock-resistant materials to prevent their biomass from smashing against, rather than smashing, the target.

As it turned out, you can still flex your muscles with high (actuation) strength, even if your muscle material isn't flexible at all-you just need a (modest) understanding in mechanical engineering, and lots and lots of moving parts made from said material.

**May 1****st**** 2029 Ground Zero, Manhattan, New York**

As New Blacklight was coding and upgrading, Elizabeth Greene was also adapting and evolving.

The newest construct of the Infected, the Great Brain Hive, were constructed on the same point as the Infestation have originated-inside the old Blackwatch Headquarters in GenTek New York.

"This is Elizabeth Greene to all Infected"

"We may have fought a losing battle against the Blacklight, the ill-fated viral decedents of Humanity, our stagnancy prevents us from ever matching their quality with our quantity."

"But Nature still howls within the Hive Mind of every Infected."

"Sure, the Blacklight had nanotechnology. Sure, the Blacklight had all the technology of their Human ancestors. Sure, the presence of Individuality made them constant innovators that made themselves surpassing us in every turn in every time and every battle we have ever fought them."

"And the total amount of Biomass on earth is limited...Except Ourselves and Blacklight, there were no more Biomass left to infect or consume..."

"We may be facing certain doom is we continues our stagnancy and stick with what Nature already have. But, just like that James Heller called out first to His race, what really lies within Nature is the power of Evolution!"

"Yes, Alex Mercer may had cracked the secret about it. Blacklight may have improved upon it to the point that nothing in Nature ever possessed anything that's even remotely similar to them. And this 'New Blacklight' may have pushed it to the logical extreme, even transcending it."

"But it's ultimately Nature, ultimately Us, who have originally come up with the idea of Evolution."

"We are the first user of Evolution."

"We have been evolving even before their ancestors even emerged."

"We held all the ancient secrets about evolution, and they hold none."

"They may have individuality and innovation, but a thousand separate minds could not replace a mind with a thousand brains worth of power."

"With this Great Brain Hive, we can catapult the computational power of our Hive Mind to the power of every Human brain combined, in a single mind. We could surpass their quirks and trickery with actual, raw, unfiltered evolu-"

A projectile, traveling at mach 5.5, shot through the enormous brain in the center of Manhattan, New York, puncturing a hole through protective and neural tissue as if they weren't even there, pushing the enormous, mutated body of Elizabeth Greene right through the other side of the Great Brain Hive, turning near 1/5th of the entire Brain Hive's mass into a well-done bowl of scrambled brains, spilling out from the entry and exit hole.

Jack Harper 0, the original Jack Harper, the founder of Cerberus and one of the main developers of DFEV SC4/L5.x or New Blacklight, emerged from the shattered shell of his Flight Form, one hand holding Elizabeth Greene's neck, another hand forming a injector not unlike the fangs of certain venomous animals, plunged into the main Biomass of Elizabeth Greene.

Arriving to the scene using the newest Nuclear Ramjet Engine derived from Holminid Matter enabled Nuclear Reaction technology and a Shock Rider lifting body airframe derived from a newly uncovered (ex-)classified design file of what used to be the U.S. air force X-37B from an underground bunker in a desert in Nevada, Jack Harper lifted off New Detroit using a gunpowder-powered launcher when Elizabeth Greene have started to broadcast her declaration of a full scale invasion on every communication frequency that existed, crossing the distance of nearly 1015 kilometers within 9 minutes aiming at the centre of mass of the Great Brain Hive and the likely location of Elizabeth Greene's body mid-flight; plunging straight through the center of the Great Brain Hive and tore Elizabeth Greene's body out from the center of the enormous brain as he arrived.

Strength of Flesh and Bone can not match that of Graphene and Diamonds.

The spine of Elizabeth Greene and the tubing connecting her body to the main Biomass under Manhattan have been severed. Elizabeth Greene, still flying at over mach 0.6, fluttered in the wind like a piece of old, torn rag, despite she have started to quickly regenerate from the Injury sustained when her entire body was torn out from her throne in the Great Brain Hive during the impact.

Strength of Metazoan Muscle contraction can not match that of high-strength pneumatic actuators powered directly by the high-pressure exhaust of Nuclear Fusion.

Elizabeth Greene tried all her might, Muscle Mass, Blades, Claws, Tentacles, and even all the power output of her prehensile tail that she used to use to attach to the Biomass underground of Manhattan, but Jack Harper ripped them off one by one, not even slowed down by the slightest degree, overcoming power of one of the best metazoan-capable muscle tissues tens of times thicker than his entire body.

And the strength of mere chemical bonds can never resist being ionized by Nuclear radiation and absorbed into a high-density low-energy bath of Holminid Matter that courses with the right catalysts and an adequate power supply into her Biomass through the openings on top of Jack Harper's Injector arm.

"ready mind uploading and analysis. I want to know everything Elizabeth Greene did in her deployment of her Infected Army."

The glow on Jack Harper's body changed from blue to orange, then from orange to a crimson red, then back into an incandescent orange like fire or molten lava, as an enormous amount of heat energy is being released from the conversion of Elizabeth Greene's biomass into Holminid Matter and absorbed from the inside out by the invading tendrils of Jack Harper's Biomass, sorted, compressed and gets stored inside Jack Harper's own Biomass/body.

MOTHER screamed in agony as her body become smaller and smaller as her Biomass is being absorbed by Jack Harper, that scream becomes smaller and more distorted as the unconsumed Biomass of MOTHER become smaller and smaller, and stopped completely as the last bit of her cells and remnants of her Biomass gets completely absorbed into Jack Harper himself, which comes to a rolling stop on the Biomass-infested ground that used to be Pavement of Manhattan, New York as he finally bleeds off last of his kinetic energy and fell to the ground. The more than 125 tonnes of Elizabeth Greene's biomass is converted into Holminid Matter and Stored inside Jack Harper's body, which quickly reacted by increasing the thickness of the walls of the Pneumatic Actuators that currently powers his motion to nearly half of the radius of the entire thing, balancing out the increased weight.

In the background, the remnants of the Great Brain Hive can be seen collapsing and liquefying into a mass of fluids that is not unlike minced meat or semi-curdled blood-inside the outer parts of Jack Harper's Airframe in his Flight Form, which he have shed into the Great Brain Hive, lie a special material he termed "Bloodtox", a kind of enzyme that bores into Redlight-infected cells through recognition of a Redlight-specific IFF antigen, recognizes the highly conserved Barcode Sequence in the viral Genome of Redlight and degrades the DNA of the entire cell from this point out.

With the majority of the Cellular DNA broken down from the Barcode Sequence out by the invading Bloodtox molecules, the cell could no longer function properly and dies via Apoptopsis-turning the affected Redlight Biomass into a puddle of cell fragments and fluids that resembles curdled blood or (extremely finely) minced meat in appearance and consistency. This liquefied mass could then be Consumed by Blacklight, Old or New, at ease and without any ill effect.

(It is also unlikely for a Bloodtox-like material to be developed against either Original or New Blacklight, as Blacklight Individuals had the full privilege of editing their entire genome, which means that no species-specific sequences must be conserved across edits or iterations. And they had a different type of IFF which is much more sophisticated than a specific kind of antigen that could be recognized by an attack agent and targeted.)

(Blacklight have firewalls against such attacks due to their Individual nature needing extensive protection from possible Cyber-attacks launched by other Individuals within their civilization, while Redlight do not have firewalls because they were a Individual-less Hive Mind. And you won't have any experience on computer security if there can be no computer attacks in your civilization, which again is a common feature of Hive-Minded organisms that are incapable of forming Individuals that may in turn attack each other in a Cyber-war.)

(Yes. Having a professional Firewall/Antivirus software on your computer really DO save lives.)

(Due to some reasons, Blacklight, even New Blacklight, still have a weakness against seawater. It was thought that taking in seawater with it's high ionic strength through their respiratory network causes some of the nanomachenical components of their Biomass to seize up, causing damage that have to be repaired using mass and energy. The isolation mechanisms found on the surface of most forms of Blacklight Biomass, however, mitigate this weakness significantly. Though they can still extensively colonize places outside seawater. Freshwater, on the other hand, does not seem to have an effect on them.)

"You Idiot!"

Elizabeth Greene's voice once again emerged, not from the now slowly melting remnants of the Great Brain Hive, but from the ground itself-all of New York's biomass, everything from the meat moss on the ground to the large, towering tentacle-shaped constructs that have grew on most of the skyscrapers.

Elizabeth Greene: "The Entirety of the Infected Biomass are a part of my body-and the entirety of the Infected Brainmass are part of my mind. I have already designed something you Humans will definitely. Not. Be. Able. To. Handle."

The ground below Jack Harper suddenly starts to rise, a wall of flesh with millions of tendrils and thousands of eyes, mouths and other horrible things emerged from underground, and starts to expand out from the place where the Great Brain Hive used to be, consuming everything, Infected, natural, fossil, anything organic, in it's path.

Jack Harper: "But no matter how powerful you tried to evolve into, Carbon based lifeforms can never surpass the power of the atom!"

Holminid matter shatters into brilliant streams of subatomic particles as discharges of a modest few kilojoules per shot energized the baryons inside to the right temperature-density conditions that is necessary for the conversion of nucleons into mesons and subatomic particles through the Electroweak interaction, jets of particles shot out of several thousands of miniature reaction chambers and nozzles Jack Harper formed on the bottom side of his hands and feet. The intense energy/particle flux propelled Jack Harper up into the air, Iron Man style, and the ground beneath him have now started to burn as the subluminal exhaust of ionizing radiation turned the atoms and molecules on the ground into a cloud of room-temperature partial plasma.

Jack Harper glided toward the front face of the Wall of Flesh with a trail of ionization behind him, spraying the pile of Infected Biomass with charged particles and turning the Biomass into inactive, lifeless plasma. But it was not enough-

-Energy 3486.52 EJ 125000 kg-

-Estimated energy needed to clear the Current Infestation=244ZJ and rising-

-Estimated energy needed to clear the Current Infestation=251ZJ and rising-

-Estimated energy needed to clear the Current Infestation=258ZJ and rising-

-Estimated energy needed to clear the Current Infestation=267ZJ and rising-

The Wall of Flesh propagates outwards with it's mass increasing to the square of the radius it currently encircled. And as every minute passes it looked more and more desperate for not only Jack Harper or Cerberus, but for the entirety of New Blacklight, to win this battle.

Bloodtox, a sort of antibiotic for the Redlight infestation, originally developed by the Cerberus as a sort of last-ditch defense against large scale high-mass outbreaks of Redlight Infected concerning the possibility of the Infected developing a resistance, was selected as a weapon against the expanding Wall Of Flesh. Once the decision is made in the higher levels of Cerberus command, the gene for synthesizing this enzyme is transmitted to every Evolved and New Blacklight Individual that is in the way of the expanding Wall of Flesh.

"This is Jack Harper speaking: Even though we did manage to find, locate and destroy the Great Brain Hive of Elizabeth Greene and killed her physical body, it did not play out as we thought about. MOTHER is just an avatar of the Elizabeth Greene who have became the greater Hive Mind of the Infected biomass threading through the underground of all the places where we have yet to clear the Infestation from. And the destruction of the Great Brain Hive have just enraged her. Sacrificing much of their own Biomass through technology that we are yet to know about, The Infected have sent out an attack against us, and this time, it's Quantity above all."

"Originated from New York, the place of the original outbreak, it seems like that all the Infected tissue have grouped into this, multiple kilometer, wave or wall of something, which have been expanding into it's surroundings, Consuming everything in it's path. Blacklight Individuals may be able to escape, but any of our constructs, technology and buildings would be completely ravaged and turned into a part of the Infected's Own biomass. Throwing us back into the time just after the Outbreak."

"The Gene for the synthesis of the species-specific kill protein, Bloodtox, have been broadcast through Starlink to every Evolved and Individual on the entire continent. It was your time to fight, everybody, everyone, every Individual. For this will be our battle for survival against the ultimate bad ideology turned monster in the entire history of life as we know it. We could not afford to lose."

A detailed protocol for the effective deployment and use of Bloodtox against Infected tissue was included with the FASTA file for the Bloodtox gene itself, attached to the announcement.

Supersonic objects launched themselves and flew across the air, but they were not planes. Streaks of light glided across the ground, but they were not headlights. Rockets launched from launch-pads and silos, both known and unknown towards the expanding Wall of Flesh, but the tip of these rockets were not warheads, either.

Nearly half of the entire U.S. population, and nearly the entirety of what's left of the Canada's, rushed toward the expanding circle of Infected tissue, from the earliest L3p Evolved to the newest L5b Individuals, everyone that is capable of receiving, synthesizing, transcribing and translating genes, along with countless Synthetics and Vehicles, joined the ultimate fight against Elizabeth Greene's global Hive Mind, and her ultimate weapon-The Wall of Flesh.

Jack Harper, who first thought about using Bloodtox against the Wall of flesh, have fought a hard battle against the ever expanding wall-Holminid matter converted to atomic matter by the kilogram, synthesized into Bloodtox and sprayed onto the front of the advancing wall, causing kilometers of wall tissue to apotoptosize and melt away. Infected attempting to collect the leftover Biomass suffered from the same fate as the contaminated biomass destroyed their own cells as well.

-Energy 1815.31 EJ 65100kg-

-Reinforcements have arrived-

The first to arrive was the supersonic Flight form L5s, which impacted parts of the wall, absorption tendrils expanding into the tissue itself taking chunks of it out weighing several tens of tons while the Bloodtox they brought with themselves melting down hundred-meter chunks into pulp, before the Individuals themselves jumped out of the wreckage, blood red mist trailing behind them causing more of the Infected tissue to turn into inactive mush.

The rockets are then arrived within about 20 minutes to half of an hour, light from hundreds of MIRVs reentering the atmosphere illuminated the night sky as if it was daytime. Some of the MIRVs had a payload of Bloodtox itself, which exploded into a mist taking out hundreds of meters to kilometers of the wall in a single strike, leaving a viscous goop of dead cells and minced flesh in the wake. Some carried Evolved and Individuals themselves, which bursted out of their MIRE midair, morphed into their appropriate Flight form and start to rain down Bloodtox and death propagating from several hundred meters per second to more than one and half kilometer per second. Several MIRVs, turning biological warfare to it's logical extreme, carried bacteria that were engineered to produce Bloodtox from the local supply of Biomass on the spot-part of the Wall that got hit starts to crumble into itself, red mist evaporating while liquefied Biomass flowing down from the gaping corrosion wounds, burning down the Wall like fire burning down a lit candle.

The third wave that arrived were the Synthetic Fliers that were produced by many of the major industrial companies of New Blacklight in the main Liberated States as emergency orders, or even by someone that had the Biomass and decided to join the fight without having to risk their own lives. Many functioned as missiles that impacted the Wall and injected it's payload of Bloodtox into even the bones that made up the internal support structures of the Wall of Flesh, causing large chunks to crumble to the ground. Others slowed themselves down to spray as much of the area of the Wall of Flesh as possible-causing the area sprayed upon to essentially melt away. There are also ones that transformed mid-air into forms that are designed to damage the Wall in depth-everything from projectile turrets, boring drills to simple, spiked balls that opened up holes for the Bloodtox-saturated air to reach into the depth of the Wall of Flesh. Bones that were damaged start to necrose, losing their support strength and causing other parts of the Wall's biomass to liquefy and degrade as well.

The fourth and final wave, the ground invasion, have arrived. With the air strike already saturated the air around the expanding Wall of Flesh with Bloodtox enough to melt away more than 20 times more Redlight biomass than the Wall currently had; the ground strike team just have to make enough holes on what's left of the Wall to make sure every bit of it's Biomass gets thoroughly marinated... Synthetic Boring machines and Synthetic Excavators did their job, and used whatever type of equipment they had, drills, chainsaws, spades, claws and knives, to tunnel into the depth of the Wall's tissues, injecting their surroundings with Bloodtox as they dug deeper and deeper. Synthetic Hunters and Synthetic Juggernauts entered the holes, their hardened limbs and blunt-force weapons cracking whatever bone they encountered allowing the Bloodtox in the air to seep into the marrow, destroying the Wall of Flesh' circulatory system loop by loop.

Evolved and Individuals that arrived by land also bore into the wall, using whatever kind of tools they had, Consuming the biomass they tear off during the process and synthesizing it into more Bloodtox; hole-making tools carried by all kinds of strike units punched deep inside the Wall's tissue and injected the would with lethal amounts of Bloodtox, melting down the tissue behind them while the tool-bearers sprint across the intact part of the wall.

As the majority of the wall have been melted down into inactive, apoptotic Biomass "goop", what used to be the skeleton of the Wall can now be seen. "hearts" of some sort could be seen beating on the inside, and the skeleton, simultaneously crumbling away and regenerating with large chunks of it severely damaged or missing, are now completely exposed.

Many of the Evolved and the Individuals morphed their arms into sharp blades, leaped onto the remaining skeleton, and starts to slice through it, bone by bone. Many of the Ground units extends what looks like tubing or absorption tendrils, and started to suck the liquefied biomass into themselves as the Wall melted down. Bloodtox was injected into many of the "hearts", while many units of Blacklight/New Blacklight simply stabbed right into the others, pumps running at maximum, tendrils extended into the circulatory vessels of the Wall, and started to Consume it's Biomass from the inside out. Necrotized bone tissue falling from the heights. Melted soft tissues crumbling and splashing down into the ground. Organs bursts into showers of all kinds of fluids that mixed into the river of melted Biomass which is being quickly sucked away and Consumed. Mists of Bloodtox melting away the rest of the Redlight Biomass as it crumbled onto the ground. the Wall of Flesh stopped advancing as the last of it's hearts are either intoxicated and melted down or outright Consumed, the many rootlets of the Wall pulled out by heavy Equipments, New Blacklight Individuals, Synthetics or being traced down to the tip by Absorption tendrils of the various Blacklight units and consumed from the inside out.

One hour later, the majority of the Biomass of the wall is already inside the bodies of all kinds of units of Blacklight/New Blacklight, leaving only small puddles of blood-like fluids and organic materials behind.

Another hour later, not even a single trace of the Wall of Flesh was left behind. Except for the fact that literally everything behind the now Consumed wall was now completely gone-nothing. No remnants of what used to be there, no buildings, no trees, no Infected, not even installations of New Blacklight have survived. The only material that were left was Silicon Dioxide-Sand. No other minerals were left behind. The entire area that were swept by the Wall of Flesh was now completely devoid of anything that contains Carbon-it looks like the Infected did indeed put all their Biomass inside this Wall of Flesh.

The amassed strike force have started to disband and leave. Absorbing the entire Biomass of the Wall of Flesh proved a huge Boon to New Blacklight, but something else rocked the minds of every Individual on the entire planet, even before the leaving Blacklight and New Blacklight could deposit their booty back into their own homes...

: The Wall of Flesh was defeated!

: The ancient battle of Order and Chaos have been resumed...

It's Hard!

(Clarification)

(Despite being technically of the same faction, it was customarilly in the Evolved/New Human/Blacklight/New Blacklight race/faction/society to refer to any Individuals that were created from a Human infected with one of the older versions of the DFEV SC3.x virus as a Blacklight Evolved, and any Individuals that are created through a system update to DFEV SC4.x and any offsprings/clones of such an individual as a New Blacklight Individual. The reason: Older versions of Blacklight is somewhat infectious, arguably less and less so, as their installation packages were small enough and were delivered using a viral carrier. Meanwhile, the Newer versions of Blacklight, version DFEV SC4.x and above, had an installation package that was simply too large to fit inside any viral carrier as known by the time DFEV SC4/L5a, the first version of the Blacklight OS that had this trait, was developed; and therefore could only be installed via wireless/information-based system update in an Individual/Evolved of version DFEV SC3/L3b/p and above. which means that they are no longer Infectious in any way-all New Blacklight Individuals could be considered a new species that are created through an inseparable endosymbiotic merger of the Viral genome and the Human genome of the Original Blacklight, a relationship that is similiar to the relationship between the original Archaeon that have swallowed an endosymbiotic alpha-proteobacterium and the first true Eukaryotes with mitochondria; Similar yet different. Hence the different species name and Individual title between Old and New Blacklight. Though this difference did not cause any of the traditional problems with trans-human species in most traditional versions of Sci-Fi works, as Blacklight (both Original and New) is already the result of genetic engineering, and uses it to the point that the genetic differences between different versions of DFEV Users/Evolved/Individuals are often bigger than there is between different Domains of natural life-more different than between a bacterium and a paramecium rather than say, the difference between wolves and dogs, or horses and donkeys, or different races of people.)


	7. Chapter 7

**(Part two)**

**Untested technological updates may have some unintentional, and rather amusing, side effects.**

Hiro hiroshimo was a backyard scientist in Japan. Two years since the Outbreak, nothing seems to have changed in Japan. Hiro still worked with his bobby robotics, computers and electronics. The Outer Internet was out, but Japanese ISPs quickly fixed the problems by opening their own Rood Name Servers. 7 months earlier, a certain message in his head claimed that he have been "Evolved" due to the need to fight the ever-increasing infection. Still nothing to worry about, and he continued to play with robotics, skipping the introduction message and tutorial that comes with the strange system during it's initialization, and proceed to use his new found powers from the "DFEV SC3 L4i 'International' genetic/biomolecular operating system" to perfect his creations. Nothing had changed in the life of this little boy-There were no Starlink coverage in Japan as the Japanese ISPs had another networking solution for Internet, or at least Intranet access in Japan when the Outbreak destroyed the Root Name Servers of the U.S. and cut off Internet access in most parts of the world. And therefore there is also scant information about the Redlight Outbreak in the Japanese archipelago. Even after the global distribution of DFEV SC3 L4i converts the remaining (largely untouched) Human population into Evolved, most just shrugged the event off as if nothing was peculiarly interesting. Of course, geeks and coders in Japan, like Hiro hiroshimo himself, have already started exploring the use and capabilities of the "Strange system that appeared in their head that came from nowhere". (Most Japanese people couldn't read or understand English!) Like the group of five that managed to reproduce the abilities from One Piece, or the group of six that brought realistic powers from My Hero Academia into a recent ACG convention in Tokyo.

About a month ago, Hiro hiroshimo noticed something appearing on his GUI display: "Update to DFEV SC4 L5b". Looking up the Japanese Intranet, he noticed from others who have received this message that this was supposed to be the newest update of the DFEV operating system developed by Cerberus in the U.S. that "Brings new capabilities, simplifies coding and eliminate the volume restriction on Biomass that can be contained by an Individual of a certain volume." Which is great for his recent project on emulating certain "un-physical" parts of the ability of Ghouls in Tokyo Ghoul. Namely, the ability to extend a large, voluminous structure out of their bodies that is solid and of high strength, and fold it back inside themselves once no longer needed, at will.

Selecting the "Upgrade" potion, Hiro laid down inside his room and prepared to fall unconscious for a while. (All current system updates of DFEV/Blacklight/New Blacklight require storing, shutting down, transcribing and rebooting the Individual consciousness to implement the different emulation architecture of a different version. A lot less painful when compared with the older update procedures which, as Jack Harper announced when his team finished DFEV SC3 L4a/b/i, "An experience that is more painful than death"; But still comparable to general anesthesia.)

However, once he woke up from the update procedure, Hiro hisoshimo noticed, that, everything magnetic, including the speakers on his computer, the motors that are used in many of his contraptions, magnetic parts used for modeling, even magnets inside the hard-drive of his computer, have been stuck to the wall of his room.

Attempting to take off one of the magnets from the wall, Hiro approached the magnet with one of his hands, and it flew off the wall and moved away, as if Hiro's body was repelling it. Hiro hisoshimo tried to pick off other magnets on the wall, and the same thing happened again-whenever any part of Hiro's body approaches a magnet/magnetic part, it gets repelled and moved away, preventing himself from being able to touch it.

Still not satisfied with what he saw, Hiro hiroshimo tried to change the shape of his body to try and catch the magnet. And it still failed-the magnets flew off the wall, hovering midair as if something was controlling it from within, and escaped Hiroshimo's touch.

"Agility+" "Net" "Forceps" "Chopsticks" "Harpoon" "Web" "Web slinger" "Tentacle" "Sticky hand(toy)" "more Tentacles" "Cage" "Trap" "Lariat" "What-Ever-Contraption-This-Is-To-Catch-A-Magnet"

Holes are punched all over the walls of the apartment building Hiro currently lives in by all kinds of tools He summons or transforms into in his attempts to catch the flying magnets that were repelled by his body, And still no magnets to be caught. One of the magnets, being near a hole that leads to the outside of the building, flew out of the room and escaped in a parabolic trajectory away from Hiro's apartment.

Enraged by the magnets' strange activity, Hiro transformed into a stream of Biomass and jets out of the hole the small magnet escaped from, chasing the magnet all the way onto the ground-and as He approaches the flying magnet, it started to change direction and fly outward instead. Quickly shifting back into his original form mid-air, Holminid matter flow toward the extremities of his limbs and burned into streams of subluminal particles, Hiro hiroshimo stalled himself midair using thrust from the particle streams, and start to chase the flying magnet through the air. "Aerocapture" "Capture webbing" "Grappling hook" "Sticky tentacle" "Sticky web" "Web shooter" "Constricting whip(Indiana Jones)" "Pincer-hect(Tokyo Ghoul)"

A small, shiny object flied through the air, with a 14-year-old figure chasing behind it tightly, glow of ionization trailing behind, all kinds of apparatus and appendages constantly thrashing out attempting to catch that tiny, silvery, magnetic bugger and fail each and every time in actually catching it.

The small magnet made it's way to mainland China, Hiro hiroshimo chasing behind it , blasting holes through towering Infected Hydra and Super-Hydra with his bare body as a sheath of compressed and ionized air develops around himself, protecting his Biomass from splashing onto, rather than splashing through the obstacles on the route. The magnet changed it's direction northward to Russia mid-way, Hiroshimo absorbed the biomass from a random Goliath that happen to be in the way of the chase to fuel up himself, the Goliath's simple brain couldn't even react to the hypervelocity impact to the center of it's mutated mass before it got grabbed up by a web of tendrils and gobbled up by the owner of said tendrils; and head north to Russia.

Random Evolved stuck in the middle between that Goliath and a cliff, freed only when both the Goliath and the Cliff have disappeared leaving a flat, U-shaped channel: "The ancients granted us passage."

Following the Earth's magnetic field and repelled by the newly formed 1500-ton mass of superconductor even more strongly, accelerating away from Hiro hiroshimo faster and faster, until it have reached Escape velocity, still chased by the disgruntled, maddened up Individual above the Arctic, and escaped on a trajectory towards the moon.

Still dissatisfied, Hiro hiroshimo pushed his propulsion jets to overdrive, burning off tens of grams of holminid matter each second, a shower of aurora trailing behind him as the streams of exhaust particles impacted the earth's upper atmosphere.

-Energy 130.496 ZJ 149950kg-

-Target within reach: 2.24m-

"Katana"

Reprogramming his scalpel tool into a pair of mechanically-controlled diamond-like carbon manipulators/hooked blades nearly 2.5 meters long, Hiro hiroshimo reached toward the magnet with this contraption after initially failing several times, captured it between the hooks of the blades, and pulled it toward himself. However, as it turned out, due to the intense heat from compressing the air in front of itself, the Magnet have already been demagnetized-it no longer shows any phenomenon of magnetism, and is no longer being repelled by Hiro's body.

Looking at the (quickly receding) earth-moon system, Hiro decelerated using the same Holminid matter decomposition reaction that propelled him up there, and start to accelerate back toward his home.

An apartment building in Japan, full of holes and dispersed magnets, collapsed into a pile of magnetized rubble, which have miraculously bounced off every single Individual that inhabited it.

**Sep 5****th**** 2029, Technology R&D facility, Cerberus HQ, New Detroit**

Jack Harper 1(1): "What just happened to the phenomenon of magnetism that every magnet and magnetic parts start to fly away from us?"

Perceval Aiton 2(10): "I believe that it it not the phenomenon of magnetism that had issue-I believe it was the new Update!"

"You see, Holminid matter is a superconductor-in fact, one of the best superconductors we have ever known about."

"And superconductors repels magnets due to the meissner effect, where the fact that a superconductor being a perfect conductor causes all the magnetic field lines that were supposed to pass through the superconductor are instead completely excluded by the corresponding induced eddy currents within the Superconductor, causing the source of the magnetic field or and the superconductor to repel each other."

Jack Harper 1(1): "Yes, but I deed see superconductors elsewhere. They causes magnets to hover above it at a set position, instead of repelling them."

Perceval Aiton 2(10): "But what you are describing is known as a type II superconductor-a kind of imperfect superconductor. In real life, all superconductor have a maximal internal current density before it becomes a normal conductor, and allow magnetic fields to permeate it. So once the external magnetic field from the magnet reaches a certain threshold, the magnetic flux lines will be able to penetrate the superconductor in the form of localized vortices of the current carrier within it, maintaining the immediate pattern of magnetic field lines around it, causing it to levitate against each other at a set position instead of being repelled."

"But Holminid matter was a type I superconductor- a perfect superconductor that does not allow magnetic flux lines to penetrate it as charge carrier vortices, and therefore, holminid matter will always repel a magnetic field. And it was one of the best superconducting material Old Humans, Blacklight or New Blacklight have ever seen! Normally, a type I superconductor will achieve it's maximum force of repulsion and stop repelling the source of magnetic field once the critical magnetic field strength that responds to the critical current density of the material have been reached. But it was estimated that in order to break the superconductivity of Holminid Matter, the external energy applied must also completely unbind it-an energy requirement that is normally only satiable with nuclear reactions. "

Jack Harper 1(1): "and this means that it's almost impossible for Holminid matter to reach this point of saturation with mundane sources of magnetic fields in order for it to stop repelling the source of it."

Perceval Aiton 2(10): "Though it would be still possible to bind a piece of Mu metal to a piece of Holminid matter with trivial forces and have it encounter and shield against a magnetic field up to a certain strength without being repelled or unbinding."

Jack Harper 1(1): "Mu metal was mainly constructed from Iron, Nickel as well as small amount of copper and chromium... Making it out of the elements may be quite hard... but an ATPase that was derived from the Nitrogenase complex, coupled with a properly shaped molecule with high internal electric field should do the job."

Jacob Taylor 6(110): "And a protein shell around the metal particle so it could be transported, organized and applied to wherever needed it using existing biomolecular/nanotechnological self-assembly procedures."

A patch, labeled "Holminid magnet repellation problem Hotfix", was issued almost immediately at the same time the problem is discovered.

CODEX: Magnet susceptibility of New Blacklight Individuals and constructs

Despite the introduction of the Mu-metal based shielding, there is still a limit to how strong a magnetic field can be before it would penetrate the shielding and cause the same repulsion effect as on an unshielded DFEV SC4/L5b+/New Blacklight Individual-even Mu-metal had a magnetic saturation point, and once this point is reached, the residual field strength will penetrate the shielding and start to act upon the superconducting Holminid matter-containing Biomass beneath, causing the Individual to be repelled, often quite strongly.

In application, however, this effect can also be used in a desirable manner-since Mu metal attracts magnets, and Holminid matter repels magnets, these two materials are often used in tandem, with the thickness of the Mu-metal shielding precisely determined and actively controlled to ensure the overall biomass of a New Blacklight Individual acted neutrally toward magnets/magnetic fields.

As a bonus, the introduction of Mu-metal into the physiology of New Blacklight, when worked in tandem with Holminid matter, allows an Individual to precisely control his/her internal permeability, which may be used to (temporarily) make the user invisible.

Additionally, by applying electric currents to loops, or coils of Holminid matter with precisely positioned masses, or "cores" of Mu-metal, a DFEV SC4/L5x/n Individual, after this update/hotfix, could even create and manipulate magnetic fields of their own. Which also means that they would never have a problem manipulating small pieces of magnets any more.

**Feb 1****st**** 2030, Ares II, Prometheus Planum, Mars**

The Zeus rocket have injected to a low mars orbit. This specific mission was to investigate the strange, pulsating gravitational anomaly that happened to emerge from somewhere on the martian highland plain, and was fitted with gravitational detectors to aid in the location of the anomaly and landing of the Zeus on the top of is once the anomaly was properly located.

After a few orbits around mars, the gravitation detectors successfully located the precise location of the anomaly, and a landing is plotted to that location.

As first invented by Perceval Aiton during the discovery of Holminid matter and pioneered by Jack Harper in the fight against the Wall of Flesh, streams of precisely measured holminid matter D(-1) is injected into the 6 large reaction chambers of the Zeus's engines, precisely controlled, tightly focused, sub-kilojoule level laser pulses impacting the D(-1) fuel, and causes the particles inside to reach electroweak conditions, disintegrate into a stream of pions, kaons and other exotic particles, and blast out of the engine nozzles at nearly 70 percent the speed of light. The Zeus started it's descent toward the Prometheus Planum, when suddenly-

A strange flash of light emerged from a single point on the surface of mars, which quickly expands and turns into a massive blue fireball that envelopes nearly enveloped the entire hemisphere of mars centered around the location of explosion.

The Crew quickly responded to the expanding fireball and aborted the landing, engines at full throttle and accelerated at a pace of more than 500 meters per second squared-which barely escaped the expanding fireball of the explosion. Behind them, the entire hemisphere of mars have been blown open like an orange that have been shot with a 9mm bullet, debris and fragments flying all across the place as a cloud of expanding vapors, no longer blue in color, have started to slowly expand and fade.

The massive explosion released more than 2.28*10^24 joules of energy-more than 4.55 times the energy of the Chicxulub Impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, nearly half a millionth of the total gravitational binding energy of Mars, and the equivalent of the sun's total energy output in 1 100th of a second. What used to be the Prometheus Planum was now the center of an enormous crater almost 400 kilometers in diameter, bedrock the scale of continents splashed like water in a huge tsunami of molten rocks as global earthquakes leveled every cliff and erected structures on Mars.

15 minutes later, the large amount of debris have started to rain down everywhere on the surface of mars-the resulting secondary impacts and the ablation of dust heated up the entire surface of mars to temperatures higher than the interior of a blast furnace-melting every piece of rock and ice on the surface of mars and killing the Whatney-clones that were current running the Ares I facility on the other side of Mars as the facility is melted down into carbon vapors and molten metal, which then gets mixed into the hot lava that used to be the surface of Mars.

**10 days later. **

As the surface of mars have cooled down sufficiently from the heat of the explosion, the escaping crew of Ares II launched a small probe toward the surface of mars-and after confirming that there are no more explosions to be heard as the probe passively slowed itself down to a landing using a parachute and some balloons, the probe opened up, sent out a miniaturized Synthetic Walker, and started to scurry around the now glassed surface for clue of what may have happened.

The temperature was still a little bit hot, and the air pressure have appeared to increase significantly-the heat from the blast must have melted most of the volatiles locked away beneath the surface of mars, and the vaporized CO2 and H2O is now the main constituents of the nascent atmosphere.

The Synthetic Walker stumbled a little, and extended a manipulator arm to pick up a small speck of reddish material, with some sort of blue luminescence appearing on top of it when looked at in the dark.

**Jun 9****th**** 2030, EagleWorks advanced paraphysics research facility, New Houston**

Ashley Williams 5(101): "I believe that this is what caused the catastrophic detonation event on Mars."

In front of the three, is a small vial holding a small speck of something that is red in color, yet glowed blue in dark.

Eichard Freeman 11(1011): "A piece of exotic remain left behind by an ancient supernova, still pulsating with violent, celestial power..."

James Heller 10(1010): "I believe it's a kind of Alloy."

"An Alloy of electrons and electron Neutrinos within a matrix of Holminid matter. The Rydberg electron cooper pairs within Holminid matter is partially replaced with electron-electron neutrino pairs, which allows bonding of the material and make it a solid rather than a superfluid."

Ashley Williams 5(101): "And that kind of neutrinos, due to some shenanigans of solid state physics, acted relativistically. Just like the relativistic electrons in Graphene."

Eichard Freeman 11(1011): "And relativistic neutrinos behaves masslessly. No inertial mass, and, in extension, no gravitational mass as well. Despite the enormous energy that these neutrinos actually possessed, which is what caused it to interact with the electrons inside the material via the Weak interaction, and made this thing possible."

Jack Harper 1(1), by remote call: "It turns out, our Holminid disintegration reactors puts out nearly 1 3rd of the mass energy of it's input material in the form of electron Anti-neutrinos."

James Heller 10(1010): "And Electron Anti-neutrinos with energy levels high enough to interact with these relativistic neutrinos and cause an annihilation reaction to take place."

Jack Harper 1(1), by remote call: "We believed that, once enough of these annihilation reactions takes place, the material will be heated to sufficiently high temperatures that cause the Holminid state to destabilize, or melt. And as the result, the high-energy relativistic neutrinos locked inside this material is now freed from the material, stopped behaving masslessly, and is now freely able to interact with electrons or nuclei in the surrounding matter in a way that it releases most of it's energy within a few seconds."

Eichard Freeman 11(1011): "Just like what happened inside a core collapse supernova. The interrupted and preserved explosion process of the ancient supernova that created this material is now able to continue again long after the glow of that supernova have already dissipated into nothing, and it's remnants incorporated into the bodies where deposits of this material is found. Like Mars."

Ashley Williams 5(101): "And we believe that, under a certain conditions, likely a combination of electric and magnetic fields, we can tilt the energy landscape of the neutrinos just enough so that it will start behaving massive again. And we believe that this is the reason that the Prometheus Planum gravitational anomaly is constantly changing-magnetic fields from the solar wind interacting with Mars caused this material to show and hide it's neutrino mass in a chaotic manner, and the resulting mass change causes a change in the gravitational force produced by the anomaly."

Jack Harper 1(1), by remote call: "And that is quite useful indeed. Coupled with the Woodward anomaly, this could be the key for gravitational manipulation. If not for the fact that the material is literally incompatible with every kind of reactors we currently had, save for some of the fusion reactors that are meant to power probes and only probes, with catastrophic consequences."

"But judging by the structure of this material, which we should call it 'Planium' by it's origin, the massive deposits that were detonated by Ares II when they initiated a landing on what used to be the Prometheus Planum, and the mechanism of it's detonation, I think that we may be able to make a safe version of Planium that is no longer incompatible with our technology, and, in extension, ourselves. And we thing that we already had this material laying around without us even noticing-check the walls of your Holminid Disintegration Reactors, and any spent fuel that may be irradiated with the neutrino flux from it."

**August 16****th**** 2030, EagleWorks advanced paraphysics research facility, New Houston**

After combing through nearly 450 tons of spent reactor fuel and irradiated wall materials take from the facility's Disintegration Power Reactor, dissolving the material in a bath of D(-1) and filtering out the solids, Marie curie 742(1011100110) have extracted about 2 grams of what she would called "Anti-Planium" from the irradiated materials. Just like Planium, but with the electron-electron neutrino cooper pair BCS condensate replaced with an electron-electron Antineutrino pseudoatom bose-einstein condensate within the Holminid matter matrix, the bosonic condensate behaved masslessly while the matrix material was pulled to a density that is almost 10 times higher than that of naturally occurring Planium-almost as dense as the normal Holminid matter that are used by New Blacklight. By subjecting Anti-Planium to the right magnetic and optical condition, the Pseudoatom condensate within the material behaves as if it had negative mass-causing the high mass-density of Anti-Planium to suddenly decrease, disappear, or, in theory, with neutrino energies above a certain point, even become negative.

Best of all, since Anti-planium is extracted from the irradiated fuel and wall materials of Holminid Disintegration Reactors, it is completely safe to use around New Blacklight reactor technology-making gravitational-manipulation within reach of the Viral descendants of Humanity.

It have also been discovered, by another team in EagleWorks, that, by shooting a beam of electron anti-neutrino of sufficiently low power density, Planium could be triggered in tha particle-by-particle basis, sending out neutrino/radiation signatures as the electron neutrino from each destabilized pair was released, without setting off the entire mass in an uncontrolled explosion-a mean of detecting, and, presumably, allow the isolating and disposing of, potential deposits of Planium without triggering another Prometheus Planum Disaster.

CODEX: The Woodward Anomaly

The Woodward Anomaly, or the mach anomaly, refers to the deviation of observed gravitational phenomenon to that is predicted by general relativity near objects whose gravitational mass was changed, or accelerated, at high frequencies. Massive objects may behave as it had dramatically increased or reduced gravitational mass, and, in extreme cases, the observed gravitational mass of such an object can even become negative. The original use of the Woodward Anomaly was the (Disproven) EMdrive of circa 2009, but a confirmation came out when an Old Cambridge laboratory successfully detected the effect of an effective negative mass warping spacetime around it using a laser inteferometer in space around a pulsed ring-shaped capacitor in year 2014, 2015 and 2016.

It have been theorized that the Woodward Anomaly was the result of high-frequency short-wavelghth gravitational waves being able to squeeze between, even propagate beyond, the "shadow membranes" sandwiching our universe in high-dimensional space which normally forces large-scale low frequency Gravitation to behave three-dimensionally; and as a result, causing small-scale high-frequency gravitational phenomenon to behave as if it was propagating through high-dimensional space-many of which could lead to anomalous, absurd, or even negative-massed, results.

CODEX: The Holminid Disintegration reactor, or Disintegration Reactor.

Since the discovery of Holminid Matter by New Blacklight and by extension, it's energetic disintegration when subjected to pulses of high-energy sources like pulsed lasers or spark discharges, this reaction have been the main power sources of all of New Blacklight-from the Individuals themselves to all forms of their technology, uses an implementation of this reaction to produce power.

For powering biological systems, the high-energy particle radiation is absorbed in water, which splits into Hydrogen and Hydrogen Peroxide-The Hydrogen is assimilated using a variant of Hydrogenase and pumped into various forms of Carbon Fixation Cycle, or directly oxidized for energy, and the Hydrogen Peroxide is either directly used as an Oxidizer, or catalytically broken down by Catalase and released as molecular oxygen.

For powering Mechanical systems, the high-energy particle radiation is instead absorbed by H(-1), a condensed form of Hydrogen. The interaction causes the material to evaporate into atomic and molecular Hydrogen gas, and this gas pressure is then used to propel actuators, motors and engines(similar to steam engines), which in turn powers the mechanical system in question.

For powering Electrical systems, the stream of high-energy particles are passed through a magnetic field-positively charged pions and kaons get deflected one way to hit one electrode, and negatively charged electrons get deflected the other way to hit another electrode, producing a potential difference between the electrodes, and, as the result, electrical power. A biochemical-respiratory battery coupled with the radiolysis/radiotrophy system, serve as an alternative mean to make electrical power.

Lastly, for propulsion, the stream of radiation and high-energy particles is simply released toward one direction-the resulting reaction force propels the User/engine/assembly toward the desired direction.

**Dec 25****th**** 2030, Kennedy Space Center, Florida**

"Are you kidding?"

"That amount of Planium...That would blow up the entire solar system if that went off..."

"Not a natural deposit... Definitely artificial."

"Planium IS a form of Holminid matter. And Anyone who found it should be able to create Holminid matter and discover the men of power generation from it."

"And would have knew it's explosive properties..."

"Which means that it must by an alien superweapon that is waiting to go off randomly and kill us all."

One Evolved, and One Individual, looked at the result from their newly built Planium detector superimposed on a real-time telescope image of Pluto and it's moons displaying more than 65000 tons of it in the center of the Pluto's largest moon, Charon, at each other, and decided to warn others about this, horrifying, "discovery".

"I did want fireworks for this Christmas. Just not so big a firework that would also turn the Earth into a giant firework when it went off."

**Jan 8****th**** 2031, Cerberus HQ, New Detroit.**

**Emergency meeting about the discovery of the Charon Planium mass/weapon around Pluto**

Jack Harper 3(11): "It should be a good new-year for every one sitting or connected to here. The Infected have been cleared from North America. We have discovered Planium, Discovered it's use in gravitational manipulation technology, and figured out a version that is compatible with our technology by ourselves. The Future was supposed to be glorious for the entirety of Blacklight, old or new. Until this thing shows up."

A picture of the Pluto, Charon and the other four moons showed up on the screen in the center of the meeting room. A file was uploaded to all DFEV SC4+ Individuals currently seated here or connected to the meeting via the Internet. A pixelated blob, glowing bright red, could be seen superimposed onto the mass of Charon.

"Just at the last Christmas, before the Holiday period even finishes, EagleWorks tested their prototype Planium detector in Kennedy Space Center Florida, and found this. We built our own detection array here in New Detroit, and found the same thing as them. A mass of Planium estimated to be at least 64000 tons in mass, with a median estimated mass of 65000 tons and an upper bound of more than 70000 ton equivalent if certain spectrum readings were correct in the sense that it may be a mass of Planium with the upper bound of Neutrino Non-Relativistic Energy estimated from a type II supernova origin. And this is just readings from passive cosmic-ray Antineutrino interactions that formed the background activity of Planium itself."

Miranda Lawson 18(10010), uploading some data to the meeting: "From the Antineutrino interaction experiments on picogram worth of this material, Planium had a detonation energy approaching 1.14*10^19 joules per (explicit) gram. The entire Prometheus Planum Disaster was caused by no more than 200 kilograms of the stuff. And a mass of almost 65000 tons of Planium... If detonated, the mass would produce an estimated explosion energy of more than 1.47*10^29 joules of energy in the form of mainly Beta radiation and Neutrino energy. That is about 3 percent of Mars's gravitational binding energy, or the total power output of the entire sun in more than half an hour and two minutes or 1923 seconds. And if compressed in a pulse that is at maximum only about 20 seconds long, it would appear nearly as bright as the sun from Earth. The intense ionizing radiation from the high-energy beta particles and neutrinos would be enough to sterilize everything in the entire solar system-on the earth, it would average about 1 Sv of radiation on all surfaces facing the explosion, impossible to shield, nowhere to hide. If we were still Old Humans by this point, or there haven't been a nanotechnological revolution triggered by the need of Fighting the Infected and we were still reliant upon the Uninfected Ecosystem of Old Earth, we will be dead."

Jacob Taylor 7(111): "In short answer, If we were still a "Normal" Organic civilization, We Will Be Dead. In long answer, This Planium mass was obviously a weapon that were designed to devastate the ecosystem in an entire solar system and kill off any Organic Civilizations that happened to live here, yet still leave the planets largely inhabitable and the local life largely un-eradicated, perfect for later colonization."

Eichard Freeman 11(1011): "Although we could definitely survive the detonation given our already intensively engineered and constantly upgrading/improving Biomass being rad-hard, whatever civilization that set this up definitely Won't give us the chance to survive or escape once their colonization forces have actually arrived. A civilization that used Planium in their military would definitely be able to at least Glass the entire Earth with ease, if not outright out-competing us in every respect. Planium power is almost 126 thousand times more effective than Antimatter power-I couldn't Imagine how powerful a Blacklight Evolved/New Blacklight Individual equivalent in that civilization powered by this fuel source would be in combat... like Creating matter from nothingness would be as easy as a breeze for something that compresses mass-energy at this level."

Jack Harper 3(11): "We suggest that we should develop technologies for spaceflight as soon as possible, escape the solar system to find somewhere that had no Planium, or at least only had natural deposits that could be exploited safely as an energy source without raising attention to the potential alien civilization that set up the Planium Mass on Pluto, and leave all the rest of Planium in the solar system behind untouched, same as to not alert the would-be Planium-deployers."

Eichard Freeman 11(1011): "I have already devised a metabolic pathway that metabolizes Planium for energy, which should be useful if a large supply of naturally occurring Planium become available. Of course, any Individual/Device/Spacecraft that uses Planium-Antineutrino Interaction for power should not have any Holminid Matter Disintegration reactions performed inside or near them, and any Individual/Device/Spacecraft that uses Holminid Matter Disintegration reactions for power should not be carrying or near any traces of Planium."

Jack Harper 3(11): "Anti-Planium production was still quite slow today-We couldn't build up a significant amount to be able to lift every bit of our Biomass off Earth, let alone conducting an Interstellar Journey toward the nearest Safe star system that had the Carbon resources that is needed for our growth, for at least 1000 years-far too slow for any sort of escape before someone shows up and destroys us with Planuim-based Warheads or worse. And I suspect that they have already spotted us from the Explosion we caused on mars that lead us to the discovery of Planium in the first place."

Jacob Taylor 7(111): "I had an idea. He(-1), a sort of ash produced during the nuclear fusion powered decompression/evaporation of H(-1) every time we flex our bodies or use our Actuators, are itself also quite explosive-and it does not produce any neutrinos during it's explosive fusion reaction into Carbon and Oxygen plasma. We could fake our death and propel ourselves away from the earth and the solar system using detonations of carefully-placed caches of He(-1), the effects would be exceedingly similar to that of a failed nuclear war that wiped out the civilizations on Earth in a failed battle against the Infected, which is an almost perfect story about a genetic engineering-caused disaster-except that once we escaped the Earth's gravitational influence and reached one of the Lagrange points around the Earth and the sun, we then take the advantage of the near-zero gravitational interference and head off to Proxima Centauri using Alcubierre Warp Drives-the small amount of Anti-Planium we currently had is plentiful enough to transport all our current Biomass to Proxima Centauri using 1.15-C Alcubierre Warp Bubbles; Once the main factor that required more for starting off here on earth-the influence of natural gravity on the local reference frame that have to be canceled out at high cost before any form of Gravitic Propulsion could be used, have canceled itself out through the precise arrangements of the planets themselves."

"Once we landed there, we could then start to build up a proper space-capable civilization, free from the interference of the Infected and the threat of the Planium-deployers, and start our Galactic civilization here."


	8. Chapter 8

**Four Years Later** **Proxima Centauri b, or now known as Dirt, Nov 22****nd**** 2034**

It have been about four months after the mass exodus of New Blacklight have arrived on this planet. Powered by Holminid matter Disintegration, The arriving New Blacklight Civilization no longer have an energy problem due to the dim, red light of the red dwarf that is not conductive to photosynthesis, and without the Infected to bother them, or a threat of a large lump of Planium that threatens to blow up and attract unwanted attention toward them, the Biomass and Constructs of New Blacklight quickly took over and covered the once-frozen planet.

Cerberus, which moved their HQ and physics experimentation facility here on their Exodus ark-ships, have restarted their projects about physics research. The EagleLabs team that used to occupy New Houston and Florida, have also moved here. Cerberus founded the city of New Hopes at the north pole of Dirt, and EagleLabs established the town of New Dreams at the south pole of Dirt, antipodal to New Hope.

Buildings, like the City-buildings and Skyscrapers of Old Earth, have sprouted everywhere on Dirt, but make no mistake, these were not the same kind of Reinforced Concrete buildings like that of Old Earth.

In order to withstand the enormous mass and density of New Blacklight Individuals-Hundreds to thousands of tons concentrated inside a volume of less than 250 dm^3, the buildings, or lairs, of the residents are printed out as a monolithic piece of Gyroid carbon-a 3-dimensional material constructed out of a continuous sheet of Graphene whose young's modulus rivals that of Monocrystalline Diamond, and whose yield strength exceeds even that of Carbon Nanotubes.

In between the residence buildings were specialized storage facilities for mass, Biomass or Carbon contains the excess mass in the form of Holminid matter, which can weigh up to several Gigatons while no bigger on the outside than an resident building on Old Earth.

Other buildings that resembles Old Earth buildings Includes the enormous Disintegration reactors that powered the entire New Blacklight civilization, the Fabrication Facilities for the emerging space fleet and the continent-sized Nucleochemical processing plants that makes everything New Blacklight needs for expansion-from Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Molybdenum and Cobalt to all the different kinds of chemical feedstock the Fabrication facilities needs in order to print vehicles, spaceships and products. Though the most important job of the Nucleochemical Processing plants, however, was to separate Anti-Planium from the irradiated feedstock produced by the Disintegration Reactors on the entire planet. Since New Blacklight can not use normal Planium due to their biology literally causing it to explode by just being near them, New Blacklight relies on artificially synthesized Anti-Planium to power their Gravitics, which is in fact, superior to the hypothetical Planium-based versions in every respect-if not for the fact that the production rate of Anti-Planium was simply too low to be able to satisfy it's demand within New Blacklight, at least for now.

**Industrialized Anti-Planium production, Wormhole Engines and the first of the Anti-Biotics codes** **1****st**** Jan 2036, EagleWorks research center, New Dreams**

Samuel Norman 111(1101111) and Kaiden Alenko 224(11010110) was standing in front of one of the irradiation stations of recently-finished TEV-Neutrino facility that surrounds the outer perimeter of New Dreams. In front of them, a small amount of blue, yellowish glowing powder is being produced by the large, complex refining facility just in front of them.

The TEV-Neutrino facility is one of the newest experiments at industrializing the production of Anti-Planium through controlling of the reaction parameters of it's creation-Inn this facility, positrons, the antimatter of electrons, are first created through collision of high-energy protons with carbon-12, extracted via a strong electric field, accelerated in a large particle accelerator that encircles the entire facility to Teraelectrovolt-level energies and then collided with a target of neutron-rich, high-z elements. Electron Antineutrinos, the energy levels of more than hundreds of billions of electrovolts, are produced in the reaction of the positron with the neutrons within the nuclei, which is then captured in a blanket of pre-made Holminid matter, 87Rb(-37+1). The result, as Samuel hoped for, was an industrially-available source of high-grade Anti-Planium-a vibrantly blue substance that vibrates with an aura of technological energy.

Quickly absorbing the first few milligrams of product with a thin tendril extended from his Biomass, Samuel Norman 111(1101111) performed a quick check on the quality of the material-optical and magnetic fields in a small chamber built inside Samuel's body tilted the electron-electron antineutrino pseudoatom condensate within the Anti-Planium to the right condition that it causes the material to behave as if it had negative mass, and sensor readouts quickly flooded Samuel's mind.

"-Maximum negative mass factor: -3.991, Response time-testing-10ns, Maximum positive mass factor: 5.991.- Wait, why did up to 36 percent of the excitation energy put into the chamber suddenly disappear?"

"Zooming into the source of energy leak..."

"O.M.G. It's full of stars."

This is New Blacklight's first discovery of a traversible wormhole, stabilized by the excess negative mass created from the first sample of Anti-Planium that is energetic enough to cause it's effective mass to become (actually) negative when sufficiently energized.

"Kaiden, put this file up the Intranet."

**2****nd**** Jan 2036, EagleWorks research center, New Dreams**

Kaiden Alenko 225(11010111) (a newly created clone as to not risk actually losing any (existing) data about the discovery of wormholes down one), having quickly assembled a test device in one of the sealed chambers in the TEV-Neutrino facility, evacuated the chamber and nervously energized the small piece of Anti-Planium within. Tendrils of carbon nanotube-reinforced-liquid crystal polymer sprouts from his "feet", anchoring himself onto the floor using a variant of Super-glue peptide whose gene was harvested from the Cirripedes in the oceans of Old Earth, as the resonant optical energy within the rotating rings-bound center volume of the device glowed brighter and brighter.

-Mass as 0.05 and decreasing-

-Mass at -0.64 and decreasing-

-Mass as -2.1 and decreasing-

-Mass at -3.39 and decreasing-

As the background as seen through the center of the device become more and more warped, suddenly, a small area of black, star-filled void appeared in the center of the test device, quickly expanding until it filled the entire spherical volume bound by the Anti-Planium bearing excitation rings within the center of the device.

Kaiden readied a few grappling devices inside his arms just in case that a large gravitational anomaly would suddenly appear and suck him through the newly created wormhole, stranding him in the void-but nothing have happened. The wormhole just sits there, no gravitational or tidal forces to be felt anywhere. Despite the wormhole leading to some sort of void, due to the chamber the test device was built into have already been evacuated, no flow of air could happen as to suck anything in the test chamber through it.

Confirming that the newly created traversble wormhole is not producing some weird graviational or radiative effects, and (obviously knowing the existence of the still rapidly-spinning excitation rings around it) carefully extending a tendril with a camera on the tip near it, Kaiden Alenko 225(11010111) started to carefully record the information that came through the wormhole.

Judging from the starlight that came through the spherical wormhole, it appeared that this first experiment have landed on a place that was in between the stars-Sol could be seen alongside with Proxima Centauri in one corner of the view across it, and Sirius could be seen on the opposite corner of the view of the sky through the wormhole.

The exit of the wormhole appeared to move quite quickly in space- in fact, judging by the extremely quick apparent motion of the stars across it, it seems that the wormhole-exit is moving across space at a speed of more than one thousand light-years per second. In a really weird manner.

"Try sending something across it..."

Kaiden Alenko 225(11010111) formed a small, radio-controlled probe on one of his hands, confirming that it is working, and threw the probe through the wormhole at the fastest pace he could manage with his actuator power.

The probe sent back a footage of the wormhole becoming bigger and bigger, the image of what's beyond it larger and larger, before extreme tidal force torn the probe up into billions of atom-sized pieces and the footage was cut off.

As it turned out, the superluminal velocities of the exit point of the wormhole have scattered the particles the probe was made off into a streak of unimaginably thin particle cloud tens of light-years across-as the causal connection between particles can never exceed the speed of light, the part of the probe that exited the quickly-moving exit of the wormhole was instantly left behind by the rapidly moving exit, and the entire probe was have experienced a literal portal-cut-getting sliced into billions of tiny slices that got stretched across tens of light-years by the edge of a quickly-moving wormhole exit powered by the Orbital motion of Dirt around Proxima Centauri itself.

**6****th**** Jan 2036, Wormhole Propulsion test facility, 240 kilometers away from New Dreams**

After the first test of a wormhole-based teleportation device ended up literally turning down anything that were sent through it into turnings light-years in length, New Blacklight have been steadily able to improve the accuracy of the positioning of the exit wormhole bit by bit- by carefully manipulating the precise location of the entry wormhole through the use of digital negative-mass generators and stabilizers and through the use of pattern-search on sub-nanosecond timescales, controlling the precise location of the exit point of a traversible wormhole have become semi-possible-the longest time they could keep the wormhole-exit stationary was about 2.67 microseconds, which corresponds to the time it takes for the orbital motion of Dirt to cross the aperture size of the current test-device-One meter in a velocity of 37.45 kilometers per second. And also to be able to somewhat control the trajectory of a wormhole across space-tilting it around it's orbit across the larger orbital trajectory of the exit wormhole for tens of light-years, which increases the chance of catching the required location within several orbits across the search-space of the connection.

Still impossible to send a probe through, but someone have already had an idea.

Jeremie Anton 447(110111111), a local engineer, had a brilliant idea-instead of trying to squeeze a ship through a stationary wormhole, what about trying to manipulate the wormhole to thread around the ship? Wormholes could be manipulated within nanoseconds-the only limiting factor was the phase-change timescale of the Anti-Planium that was used in the device that creates and props it open.

By using this idea, the third test-device had it's wormhole-generator energizers mounted facing outwards from itself, instead of having the structures facing inwards like the previous devices did. It is a proper spaceship drive, instead of a teleportation gate.

In addition of this design change, another related computer engineer, Jeremie Anton 262(100000110), invented a brilliant way to control the position of an exit wormhole-instead of focusing on just the local conditions of a wormhole exit map, the improved algorithm takes advantage of the simulated annealing algorithm and the fact that the bijection mapping between two points of space in wormholes being differentiable-in the microscopic scale, reversing an operation on the entry point of a wormhole returns the exit point to the previous location with good accuracy. Coupled with the precise knowledge and control of the current position of a wormhole entry point within nanoseconds (1/100 of the timescale most apertures screens across real space due to the orbital motion of planets/stars across their local reference frame), this algorithm simultaneously attempts to put the exit point of a wormhole near a certain point using feedback control and attempts to ensure the entry point stays within the the aperture size of the device through orbital motion, allowing much more precise location of the exit wormhole.

Programming the device to jump toward Arcturus and back, the small crowd of test crew backed off, the device first starts a small wormhole within a "Navigation chamber", controlled by simulated annealing, the small entry wormhole was rapidly "Sank" to the right (still quickly changing) location within real space that puts the exit within the predefined margin of error. A faster, quicker algorithm then takes over, holding the exit wormhole in it's place within the precious few microseconds as the orbital motion of the planet quickly pushes the defined location toward the edge of the aperture of the drive. Then, a distortion erupted in front of the test crew as the small pilot wormhole is quickly enlarged to envelop the entire test device, threading over it's volume in real space as the test device disappears into the quickly-closing entry wormhole within less than 3 times the shortest period the Anti-Planium phase change process could manage to change it's mass from completely positive to completely negative. And every bit of that change period is required.

A few seconds later, the test device emerged in high orbit around Dirt as it jumped back to the place it started with, with a large margin of error.

As it arrived without orbital velocity, a nearby patrol vessel, which was notified about it's arrival as soon as the test device/probe successfully returned intact, rushes toward the arriving probe, docked with it, and brought it back safely toward the test facility where it was "launched" from.

Downloading the data captured by the test probe during it's 1-second stay in the Arcturus system, Kaiden Alenko 225(11010111), Both Jeremy Anton (447(110111111) and 262(100000110)), as well as the project director, Samuel Norman 111(1101111), took a (metaphorically) deep breath. One of the Jeremy Antons involuntarily shifted his "clothes" into a suit of armor (in reaction to fear), as the Planium detector data downloaded from the probe revealed not just one, but nearly 6, masses of Planium orbiting around the star system-each enough to sterilize every planet in the entire star system. And now it's 5, since the intense neutrino signatures from the Distintegration reactors that were used to power the charge-up process of the Wormhole drive test device, which happened to land near one, have turned one of them into an expanding fireball of high-intensity Chernenkov photons, beta radiation and high-energy neutrinos that could be detected even right here from Proxima Centauri and the planet of Dirt.

**14****th**** Mar 2538 GS, STG mission near Arcturus, ****_The Hidden Eye_**

"Detecting emission signature suggesting Mass Relay detonation near the system of Arcturus."

"Reconstruction footage suggesting recent active mass-effect core activity nearby dormant relays within the system. Cause of detonation maybe due to improper activation procedures"

"Suggesting a survey on destinations of all relay destinations nearby. We may have a primitive race out there."

**16****th**** Mar 2538 GS, STG mission in Sol system, ****_The Hidden Eye_**

"Scans of the third planet suggests primitive civilization that have recently survived a nuclear war. Likely the creators of the unknown drive core judging by significant Element Zero emissions scattered upon the fourth planet of their solar system. And on their home planet. Uplifting potential is High."

"Requesting activation for dormant relay near Pluto-we have a direct link from council space to the sol system with all relays within the link known and explored. Open a direct route for a diplomacy first contact mission with the With the Asari fleet."

**20****th**** Mar 2538 GS, Citadel council**

Salarian councilor: "That new race was dangerous! They had already blew up a Mass Relay trying to activate one, who know what would happen if their act of unsupervised exploration would lead to if left unchecked"

Asari councilor: "They need the advanced cultures of the Galactic Community"

Turian councilor: "And they need discipline. May be a good client race of the Turians."

Asari councilor: "We suggest opening the known trail of relays toward the Sol system, and the homeworld of the 'Hyoo-manns' as their broadcast signals suggests. Send a diplomacy mission down there and keep their wanton exploration under control as soon as possible."

**1****st**** Apr 2038 A.D. Earth**

Elizabeth Greene, as the Hive Mind of the Infected: "That trick _WORKED._ Once that orbiting spacecraft lands onto, or sends out anything that would land onto the Earth, we take over the ship, Consume the crew and impersonate them using memories and skills from their alien equivalent of brains, and we could finally lead Nature of the entire galaxy to the _Right_ direction."

**Asari Diplomacy vessel ****_We Came In Peace_**

"Sending diplomacy parties to Times Square, New York, and prepare a first contact."

_Little did they know, that, beneath the simulated buildings and pavement of Ground Zero, the entire galaxy__'__s most dangerous plague awaits them._

**15****th**** Apr 2538 GS**

After the First Contact team requested more and more personnel and resources sent to them "In order to establish a more permanent outpost" across these two weeks, The Asari Diplomacy vessel _We Came In Peace_, suddenly requested to disembark and return to the citadel. Little known to the Citadel Council, the entire galaxy's worst Outbreak have been set free, impersonating the Asari First Contact team, and is coming to get to them , Infect them and eat them.

_The first vessel to return from Sol translated to more than 12000 disappearances on the Citadel and throughout Council Space, the Second and the Third to return translated to nearly a million disappearances across Council space and the Terminus systems. The Fourth vessel disappeared from Citadel monitoring for a while, and the the entire Vorcha homeworld, Heshtok, have gone dark._

_By the day 29__th__ May 2538 GS, the Sol system, the relays that leads to there, as well as Heshtok and every world that have been infested with that the Citadel Races would call __"__Protoforms__"__, or __"__Corpromorphs__"__, or __"__Identophages__"__, or __"__Genestealers__"__, have been quarantined by the Citadel Council._

CODEX: Clones

New Blacklight, like many of the similar protozoa, does not reproduce sexually, or, in better words, had transcended sexual reproduction-instead of having sex, getting pregnant and giving birth like Citadel Matazoa or Old Humans would, they reproduce via Binary fission, or Cloning-cut one Individual in half without a synchronizing data link between the two halves and after a sufficient amount of time have passed to trigger independent regeneration of the two halves, and you get two identical copies of the same Individual down to the exact same skills and memories, with Consciousness ontologically continuous toward both copies. The process could be accidental, like when a part of someone's biomass that exceeded the critical mass for regeneration gets blown off and is prevented from reuniting with the original, or it could be voluntary as one Individual could decide to separate his/her Biomass into two for all kinds of purposes which including use as test pilots/crew, as executors of some dangerous tasks, or just needing a sufficiently numbered team/crew/company when there is not enough Individuals to join them. Or just due to the simple drive for reproduction.

Despite being identical copies down to the single thought by the time of separation, it's customary for the two daughter Individuals to choose randomly the 0 and the 1 from the same Bit, and append the Bit to the end of the Name Identifier Parameter of their Parent Individual to distinguish between the two. For example, an Individual with the name "XXXX 1(1)" would become "XXXX 2(10)" and "XXXX 3(11)" once a Binary fission have taken place. The Later in generation an Individual is from the original Evolved that forms the basis of a descent line, the longer the Binary part of his/her Name Identifier Parameter becomes, and the larger the "Generation number" after their names gets.


	9. Chapter 9

**Planium Research Facility, 1.44ly away from Arcturus**

As the Wormhole drive is perfected, what used to be the biggest hurdle for all life in the entire universe-the astronomical distance between the stars, is no more.

However, as the discovery of the Planium devices, and the consequence of accidentally detonating one, None of New Blacklight was even mildly pleased, or have felt any safer.

Luckily... there are plenty of systems of which no large concentrations of Planium is present to risk accidentally blowing oneself up when someone goes near them. And Planium is easily detonated by a sufficient strong flux of high-energy electron Antineutrinos.

So, in theory, one could first send a probe that carries a Holminid-Bomb or N-Bomb- a device that produces a large pulse of high-energy electron Antineutrinos by intentionally setting off a large amount of Holminid Matter using pulsed laser fire; Into the system, set it off, wait until all the Planium within said system have detonated and the explosions have settled, before entering any new systems.

At the present energy levels one expect from Planium devices typical to that of Arcturus, such an explosion would almost sterilize an entire system (of which New Blacklight care little of, since they are after the carbon and water on those planets instead of any complete biospheres that these planets may harbor), yet produce little effects part from a somewhat-visible flash across distances even as short as Sol to Proxima Centauri.

The first batch of probes were sent out toward different star systems New Blacklight wishes to settle-Sirius, Epsilon Eridani, Gliese 581, etc. While a large research facility-one that is specifically made for the study of Planium powered by the CNO cycle rather than Holminid Disintegration to minimize risk of explosion, was established in interstellar space 1.44 lightyears away from Arcturus.

"Establishing Wormhole connection toward Arcturus Planium Device #4"

A distortion starts to form in the center of the large excitation chamber that were held stationary in relation to the background reference frame-something that a deep space space station could do where spacecrafts and planet-side devices couldn't. The distortion grew larger and larger, until suddenly, the distortion turned into an image of what looked like the interior of some complex, tube and cable-ridden machinery that quickly turned into a convex, spherical cutout of the machinery itself, which fell onto the "floor" of the Facility as the Wormhole disconnected and disappeared as the excitation chamber shuts down.

"Sample #301- Planium Positive...24.85kg, it looks like a part of some sort of fusion reactor...not Holminid matter based- as one would expect for something that works near it, even if they knew about it's properties... Stellarator design, Sturdy makeup, used Planium for stabilizing plasma..."

"Interesting, but New blacklight have better technology."

"Store the Planium away in the designated area- Ready to take next sample"

Manipulator arms picked up the ball of cut-out machinery, and deposited it into a large, square-like area, of which more than 200 different pieces of machinery- some jagged, some round, some still intact, some already fell apart, but all of which evidently had been cut out from it's original place in a perfect sphere- the result of the Wormhole being used to take the samples of.

The inside of the excitation chambers started to become brighter and brighter, as optical energy started to accumulate again to the levels that is needed to rip a hole through the fabric of space-time, sounds of gravitational waves start to intensify in a weird symphony as the gravitational manipulation devices start to charge-up to stabilize the wormhole once it is formed.

Exoduvia Harper 4808(1001011001000) oversees the sampling process, while other Individuals-the ones that used to be Scientists, or are clones of the Scientists, scurried around to gather data around the freshly brought-in sample in attempt to make sense of the exact construction of these Planium Devices and their true purposes.

**26****th**** Dec 2040 A.D.**** Planium Research Facility, 1.44ly away from Arcturus**

Exoduvia Harper 4808(1001011001000), after nearly a year of research, finally announced the elucidation of the actual purpose of the Planium Devices: "We thought that these Planium devices were weapons of unbelievably large power- Undoubtedly it can be used as such, but, judged by the result of Sampling and analysis, the original purpose appears to be something different."

Using the internal internet connection, Exoduvia Harper 4808(1001011001000) uploaded a detailed plan of the Planium Device onto the Facility's Intranet, obtained from sampling analysis.

"This, is a Stellarator-type fusion reactor. It runs the P-10B type Aneutronic fusion cycle using an internal supply of Boron hydride, which generate up to 24.5GW electrical power at a high voltage."

"Although the fusion fuel supply appears to be limited, it was used only during it's activation."

"The electrical power output of the fusion reactor is pumped into the two large, concentric rings-the same contraption as we use in our Wormhole generators."

"Where it excites this large, 65000-ton core of Planium, causing the neutrino energy landscape within to tilt in a specific way at high frequency. This results in the rapid change of mass within the Planium core, which then create a powerful gravitational effect through the Woodward Anomaly."

"Once established, these miniature mechanical generators start to vibrate as the effect is pulsed- these miniature weights close in onto the core when the core is producing high gravity, and move away when the core is not producing any gravity. This process generates the energy that is needed to keep the entire device running, and the fusion reactor is shut down."

"As this feedback cycle produces more energy than it is needed to run the entire device in standby, the excess is stored within a series of large capacitors located in the long, arm-like structures."

"We believe that this energy generation process is not completely lossless-the Neutrino energy within the Planium core is extracted by the miniature generators, which is one of the reason why the core is so large-not only it have to serve as the Devices' main function for manipulating gravity, but it also have to serve as the Device's main fuel supply- which we believe is the reason the Bootstrap reactor was there-it must have been shut down when not in use, so as to conserve it's internal supply of Planium fuel."

"We believe that, when receiving the right signal, these capacitors will discharge into the core, which produces a massive gravitational anomaly in two, semi-circular spaces around the main structure, enveloping anything nearby with a large Alcubierre Warp bubble as the localized gravitational wave within the boundaries of the bubble propels the local reference frame and it's contents toward it's destination, where it would land in a preset destination once the bubble have dissipated after a certain time."

"These functions, when combined, forms what we believe is either a transit terminal, or a weapon of interstellar scale- Alcubierre warp bubbles, when fully established, could rip through everything in it's way. Not even neutron star could stop it."

Jack Harper 1281(10100000001): "So whoever built these devices, or is using these devices, must either be using Planium for energy generation, and therefore clearly knew it's dangers as to not blow themselves or their own devices up, or they simply did not discover Holminid matter Disintegration and were oblivious about it's dangerous interaction with Planium."

Exoduvia Harper 4808(1001011001000): "Judging by the plasma-based fusion reactor design, and the fact that the Devices' utilization of Planium energy appears to be done in a way that does not involve the mechanism of it's explosive destabilization upon exposure to High-energy electron Antineutrinos, we believe that the Device-Builders must be of the second kind."

**1****st**** Feb 2547 GS, Citadel Tower**

Councilor Valern: "What? A second explosion happening in the Arcturus system?"

STG leader Exprimus: "Yes. We have recently detected a second Relay explosion, coming from the Arcturus system. And this time, it appeared to involve the sole Active Relay that leads to the system- Relay travel to Arcturus and beyond is no longer available."

Councilor Spartus: "It looks like that the Protoforms have accidentally sealed themselves inside their own system... What a twist of fate..."

Councilor Tevos: "Don't forget the now Protoform-infested world of Heshtok- and pretty much every one out of 10 on the Citadel may be a Protoform-in-disguise. And that includes you."

Councilor Spartus: "Heshtok was inside a DMZ- which would mean that there were little, if any, available spaceships within that system for the Protoforms to use or defend themselves with. And an Infested garden world is already a lost cause- We suggest we use our military superiority to bomb those Protoforms into carbon vapors and bone ash-No carbon-based life form could survive being hit with 25kg Mass Accelerator rounds traveling at 3 percent the speed of light."

Councilor Tevos: "But bombing a Garden World is against Citadel Conventions!"

Councilor Spartus: "But Heshtok was already lost-the last survey done by the Salarian STG using stealth spacecrafts from the edge of the system suggests the entire Biosphere of Heshtok was completely gone-devoured by the Protoforms. Either we bomb it to oblivion or we gets all eaten by the Protoforms that came endlessly from it."

Councilor Valern: "We suggest to approach the Local Cluster using STG forces, as to keep an eye on the Protoforms still on Earth. While the Citadel fleet will commence an orbital bombardment of Heshtok with the biggest weapons we had in our arsenals..."

Councilor Valern projects a hologram from his Omni tool, which displayed the schematic of a large, cylindrical object, the center of which have been colored blue.

Councilor Tevos: "A Death Dealer? I thought WMDs were outlawed millennia ago."

Councilor Valern: "Not for use on Barren worlds. Or in this case, a world that was irrecoverably infested by Protoforms, and should best lie in pieces. This is filled with class 5 Unstable Eezo- look at it the wrong way, and each gram would explode with a yield of more than 410 megatons of TNT. Completely radiation-free and fallout-free. It was usually stowed away the place where it was found, as far from any settled areas as possible. And each of these devices have 5 kilograms of this stuff inside it."

Councilor Valern: "Each would explode with the energy that was equivalent of half a day worth of sunlight that land on Heshtok. Or 1/50 of the Impact on Rannoch that was believed to have wiped every non-mammal animal 34 million years ago."

Councilor Spartus: "And we will be carrying 2000 of these devices to Heshtok. Which would be nearly 3/4 of all the Class 5 Unstable we have within the various mining outposts in Citadel space. And that would be more than twice the amount of sunlight that reaches Heshtok for an entire year. Or about the same energy of the single impact that happened on Thessia right before the first life emerged on the planet."

Councilor Valern: "Which should completely melt the planet and vaporize every Protoform on the entire planet. The Death Dealers would be launched from orbit, and detonate as soon as it reaches the upper atmosphere- The entire bombardment would create a superheated atmosphere of glowing hot plasma above Heshtok, the same intensity as standing right on the surface of Widow. No carbon based life, Protoform or not, could survive this."

Councilor Tevos: "Guys..."

**3****rd**** Mar, 2547 GS, Heshtok, The Shrike Abyssal**

The Citadel Fleet have gathered around the Protoform filled planet- used to be a green color that was indicative of weeds and vermin, have now turned into a patchwork of red flesh characteristic of the Protoform, and green patches of what looks like photosynthetic tissues- No wonder why the Protoform kept coming from Heshtok even as nearly all ships coming from inside out or outside in were shot down by the Citadel Quarantine enforcement fleet, better known as "Redwatch". and it was mostly the ships (or creatures?) that came from inside out.

It appeared that the Protoforms have little spacefaring ability part from taking ships from other, sentient races of the Galaxy and re-purposing them for their own- there was no orbital defenses, no ships, no vessels, in fact, no orbiting objects at all around Heshtok.

Councilor Spartus: "Commencing Bombardment!"

The Turian cruisers and frigates released the Death Dealers, while the other ships within the fleet rained down mass accelerator fire onto the planet.

"1 min 30 s from detonation"

"1 min from detonation"

"30 s from detonation"

"All fleets, retreat toward safe destination"

The Citadel fleet, after unleashing their payload on Heshtok, FTL'd out of the planet's orbit, safely retreating to nearly 1AU away.

"8 min from blast reaching fleet"

"4 minutes from blast reaching fleet"

"2 minutes from blast reaching fleet"

"1 minutes from blast reaching fleet"

"Detonation Confirmed- Yield of 4.5e+15 tonnes of TNT have been confirmed"

from the telescopes on the Citadel Fleet, the planet of Heshtok suddenly turned into a miniature star-a dim, blue one, but obviously of star-like power. The star faded after just 12 seconds, however. And after that, the blue light, nearly 1/300 as bright as the star of Heshtok, have been replaced with the glow of ionized atmospheric plasma- Nothing could have survived Bombardment, or is it?

**11****th**** Jul 2047 A.D. Heshtok, Underground**

As the plasma have subsided, and the temperature have lowered to normal, a red Tendril emerged from the solidified lava that was once the surface of the Protoform world Heshtok.

Absorbing the abundant supply of Element Zero, left from the imperfect detonation of the Death Dealers, the Heshtok Hive started to carefully experiment with it's effects- bioelectrical energy, when applied to neurons that were made to consume and envelop bits of the material, produced all sorts of gravitational distortion effects. The first step toward Biotics.

As all the carbon and carbon dioxide was still inside the atmosphere of Heshtok as it cooled down, the Heshtok Hive extended photosynthetic towers from deep underground, the RuBisCO within the photosynthetic tissues freed of their arch nemesis-oxygen, and the Infected's presence on Heshtok have once again started to grow.

But in this time, it was also Biotic.

**12****th**** Jul 2047 A.D. Epsilon Eridani**

The first Wormhole-based colony ship of New Blacklight have arrived into the Epsilon Eridani system. The system contained a two Gas Giants, one Rocky planet and a large debris disk- almost 20 times more mass than the entire Asteroid Belt combined, and scattered between the three planets.

The rocky planet was being pelted by big rocks- The accretion process of the planet haven't stopped yet. And there is plenty of water ice, carbonaceous materials and ammonia ice within the debris disk- Just what New Blacklight needed to grow.

Biomass decompressing from the tightly packed storage containers of the Colony ships, Holminid matter returning to atomic, and later, molecular matter as Disintegration reactors started up everywhere within the unfolding Biomass, the 12500 Individuals that functioned as the first colonists rapidly formed and formed into the various shapes and structures for a pioneer colony.

The Colony of Epsilon Eridani marks the first step of True interstellar cololization by the New Blacklight civilization.

CODEX: Personal Spacecrafts

As New Blacklight become spacefaring from the grand escape that was the Exodus, and discovered the mean of easy space travel that was Anti-Planium and the Wormhole Drive, the risk of an Individual accidentally fall out of a spacecraft, or somehow wind up in space without one have become very real. In the same time, personal space travel have also become popular within New Blacklight- many Individuals had the need to travel between planets and even systems regularly, and despite the burgeoning public transit wormhole stations being built on different New Blacklight inhabited planets, most of the needs for interplanetary transits were still unsatisfied.

The result, was the development of the Spacecraft Form, or the first Personal Spacecrafts. First circulating on the Internet, the Spacecraft Form was originally just a form that was adapted to atmospheric-to-vacuum flight as well as the microgravity of space. In the most basic form, the Spacecraft Form was simply an adaption of the Vacuum-tolerant state of a New Blacklight Individual, with thrusters attached to and an aerodynamic fairing/whipple shield around the main mass. Propulsion was based on ejecting high-energy particles from Holminid Disintegration reactions within the combustion chambers of the thrusters- Just like the original propulsion method Jack Harper 1(1) used during the fight with the Wall Of Flesh. As time goes by, more and more features, which include vacuum and zero-g-adapted manipulator arms, wings and heat-shields for entering and flying inside the atmosphere, and even mounts for most kinds of weapons utilized by New Blacklight themselves, are added to the Spacecraft Form.

As members of New Blacklight are known for their creativeness and ability to innovate, there was a significant period of creativity on spacecraft design when blueprints for the basic parts of the Spacecraft Form begins to circulate on the Internet. One that dwarfed the Cambrian explosion in term of morphological diversity. And also like the Cambrian Explosion, most of the wacky forms were soon extinct. Nevertheless, the lessen learned during the creation of the first Personal Spacecrafts have also been transferred to the design of Synthetics, which results in the creation of the first Construction Robots and Drones that were capable of working in the microgravity of space. Creations that greatly aids in Space construction (both Fleet and Space Infrastructure) of the burgeoning interstellar civilization of New Blacklight.

However, due to the inherent lowest size limitation of an actual Wormhole Drive, and partially due to the high price of Anti-Planium, the Spacecraft Form have no FTL capability- During interstellar transits, Individuals and Biomass of New Blacklight would still have to ride on larger, proper spacecrafts, or use Wormhole Stations to travel faster than the speed of light.


	10. AN EVOLVED HUMANITY CHALLENGE

**Interlude: Clarification and announcement for the Evolved Humanity Challenge**

This will be a clarification of the state of the galaxy, appearance and structure of the New Blacklight civilization, and another announcement for the Evolved Humanity Challenge.

**CODEX: Nouns**

Protoform:

Called The Infected by members of New Blacklight, formerly Evolved and Old Humans, it refers to the Hive-Minded lifeforms that are associated with the EHAV SC2-/Redlight Virus, which have been controlled completely by the Assimilated mind of Elizabeth Greene, or MOTHER. Presently, the Protoforms are separated- the data link between Earth and Heshtok is currently severed by the destruction of the Arcturus-ShanXi Relay, which have caused the Earth Hive and the Heshtok Hive to separate from each other: both think itself as Elizabeth Greene, but the actual thoughts and behaviors have completely desynchronized and diverged from each other.

Redwatch:

The Citadel's fleet for controlling the Protoforms or the Infected. The Redwatch are specifically trained and assigned specialized weaponry to deal with the Protoforms without taking any chance of letting one through- upon discovery of a plausible Protoform, or spacecrafts that may have Protoform present on board, the Doctrine of Redwatch is to destroy and completely incinerate the target without taking any chances or holding fire in case of mis-identification. WMDs, which are traditionally banned by the Citadel Convention, was exempted for use by Redwatch for containing and eradicating infestations of Protoform. The Redwatch is the Citadel equivalent of Blackwatch on Old Earth.

New Blacklight:

The civilization that is consisted of the heavily modified and nanotechnology-based descendants of the original Evolved created from the surviving Human populations of Old Earth infected with the retroviral agent DFEV SC3/Blacklight Virus. Their main difference from the Evolved is the fact that New Blacklight is non-infectious toward "normal" organisms due to the large size of their highly modified and expanded genome being unable to fit inside any virus, while The Evolved are somewhat infectious toward "normal" organisms due to their "mods" being individually package-able as retroviral agents that can then infect and convert other Sapient organisms into Evolved. (Garrus Vakarian will be converted into an Evolved soon.)

Cerberus:

Unlike Canon, Cerberus was the de facto leader of New Blacklight instead of the Systems Alliance. Lead by Jack Harper (and clones), who was the pioneer of Holminid Matter based technology and Spaceflight of New Blacklight, Cerberus organized the Exodus of New Blacklight to Proxima Centaruri b/ Dirt after the discovery of the Charon Planium mass that threatens to expose them toward an unknown, presumably hostile civilization if they were to stay inside the Solar System.

BloodTox:

An enzyme that targets the special, unchanging "Barcode" sequence within the genome of the EHAV SC2-/Redlight Virus. It works by entering an Infected cell upon contact with it's cell membrane, recognizing the "Barcode" sequence of the EHAV SC2/Redlight Virus, and digesting the entire genome of the Infected cell from the Barcode Sequence out, causing Apoptoptic cell death of any Infected tissue that happen to make contact with it.

Planium: The New Blacklight name for Element Zero of the Citade races. Named after the Prometheus Planum, where the neutrino flux from a Holminid Disintegration Rocket engine triggered a cache of it below ground, causing the Prometheus Planum Disaster. Upon interaction with a sufficient high flux of Electron Antineutrinos with energy ranging from 300 Mev to 500 Mev, Planium explosively decomposes, releasing more than 2.725 Gigatons of TNT worth of energy per gram. Planium possessed propertied that causes it's mass to change when subjected to correct electrical and magnetic conditions- making it potentially useful for applications such as faster-than-light travel or antigravity, if not for it's catastrophically explosive properties when interacting with the reactors and power sources of New Blacklight. However, New Blacklight have been successful in replicating the properties of Planium with a synthetic material that is safe to use with New Blacklight reactor technology, making it superficial to New Blacklight space travel.

Anti-Planium: A synthetic version of Planium produced by bombarding Holminid matter with High-energy electron antineutrinos, although it had slightly different properties than Planium when it comes to changing mass with electromagnetic processes, Anti-Planium does not interact with neutrinos in the same way Planium does, and is much less energy dense for it's mass even if somehow destabilized. This makes it safe for use near New Blacklight technologies.

**Codex: New Blacklight structure and society**

New blacklight: Technology:

The fundamental technology of DFEV SC3+/Blacklight Virus, The Evolved and New Blacklight was consciously-targeted gene editing- it bridges the gap between the Mind and the Genome of a Human subject, allowing the User to change his/her genome at will.

From this point up, the first innovation that came from this technology was a biochemical computer that is small enough to fit within a cell nucleus, first developed by GenTek Marcus d'morpheus. It allows the Mind of the user to be uploaded into the modified Biomass of a nascent Blacklight being (which eliminated the need of a centralized, lethal-if-damaged brain), and simultaneously allowing the resulting cellular Biomass to be programmed in the same way as you program a computer (which automates basic functions like metabolism and motion), forming the first viable form of DFEV SC3/Blacklight, termed DFEV SC3/L2, which allows the first Evolved to be created.

The Second major invention was the formulation of a scheme of Hierarchical self-assembly by what believed to be GenTek John Connor, which encodes the precise locations of each and every cell/device/molecule within a 3-demensional structure through the use of Canonized Octrees and Relative position encoding. The Hierarchical self-assembly process allows Blacklight beings to heal themselves almost instantly-as long as there is enough materials and cells to fill in any gaps left from damage. By changing the blueprint through a combination of transcriptional regulation and genetic editing synchronized through various means, the form of the Biomass could be changed- disassembled and reassembled nearly instantly. This allows The Evolved to shift their forms and produce devices/weapons/tool from their bodies at will, and also forms the basis of what would be the process of 3D printing-the process of which all Blacklight/New Blacklight constructs and technology are made.

The Third and most recent discovery was the synthesis and determination of properties of stable degenerate matter- Holminid matter, or holminid states by Jack Harper which would become the leader of Cerberus. Holminid matter is a kind of superconductive, highly condensed Rydberg matter, held stable thanks to the increased electron-proton interaction and effective nuclear charge caused by the extremely high density of the material. Holminid matter was believed to be the state of matter within the cores of brown and white dwarf stars. Upon being impinged by a sudden burst of energy of higher than 4000000kj/mm^2 through a laser or a (concentrated) spark discharge, it decomposes explosively into a shower of electron antineutrinos, mesons and kaons, releasing as much as more than 31 percent of it's mass energy as usable power. Additionally, Holminid matter undergoes nuclear reactions easily- the short nuclear distances within Holminid matter allows Holminid matter of certain composition to catalyze nuclear fusion of deuterium, protium and even helium, at room temperatures, which supplies enough energy to convert Holminid matter back into normal matter. This allows Holminid matter to be used as a medium for storing mass compactly- a New Blacklight Individual could carry up to 3000 tonnes of the material within their bodies, limited only by the material strength and actuation power of their normal-matter based active Biomass that are needed to contain and carry the (otherwise inert) superfluid.

Appearance of New Blacklight:

Due to their primary mean of manufacturing being 3D printing through nanoassembly, New Blacklight prefers angular, low-polygonal shapes that possessed defined crystal axes for their technologies and mutation-weapons because they are easier to build and takes up less storage space within the (common) genome of their cells (which let one to carry more of them in their "hotbar" that is easy to switch to and from at a time). Overall, the design aesthetic of New Blacklight resembles that of Jardaans of the Andromeda Galaxy - solid, polygonal, and with glowing lines indicating internal temperature and strain (less than 50% maximum power generation capacity - Blue, more than 50% power generation capacity - Yellow, Overheated (Internal temperature higher than 53C/326.15K) - Red) lining edges and crossing faces that appears to be chosen for reasons other than efficiency.

The cover Image have been changed into a depiction the New Blacklight version of Jack Harper or The Illusive Man, the leader of Cerberus within Canon ME and this AU.

New Blacklight interfaces:

Due to their unique composition that possessed an integrated BMI and are at least partially AI, New Blacklight Individuals interface with their technology the same way a computer would- through data links and Biomass "wiring" that functions as IO Buses that communicates with and controls the various components of a Construct.

The standard interface of New Blacklight technology resembles a socket- in order to interface with a piece of technology, an Individual forms a corresponding plug using Biomass (usually with one of their limbs), and "Plugs In" to the socket, making electrical contacts with and extending Biomass into the relevant locations/sockets within the device. Once connected, most form of New Blacklight technology can be controlled just like an Individual's own body, though some devices would need special pieces of software to operate properly, if being able to operate at all.

Due to an abundant supply of energy through Holminid Matter Disintegration reactions that happens within each Individual, many of New Blacklight technology can be powered solely by the Operator himself/herself through a dedicated Power bus within each and every standard Interaction Socket that is found on most New Blacklight technology. When providing power to the technology they are currently operating, a New Black Individual will use mass in a pace that is faster than normal, and the glow on their bodies will turn into the corresponding colour depending on the power draw of the Device itself.

Although they usually interface with technology directly, most New Blacklight Individuals are proficient hackers, and could interact with Citadel technology interfaces/terminals just like most other races does. (provide they don't blow up the Planium within such tech merely by being near them first)

**An Evolved Humanity-A challenge for you to write.**

If you Enjoy Mass Effect AUs and other [PROTYPE] crossover fics, then maybe you could use this idea. Instead of focusing on just a few Evolved like most other entries of the category did, or creating an equivalent of the Zerg or the Tyranids like Beastrider9 in Biomass Effect, What if EVERYONE have been turned into an Evolved- the same abilities like Alex Mercer James Heller, but without the Hive Mind and still considered individuals?

Write down your own thoughts about a society like this, remember- technology use is NOT prohibited in this scenario, and the natural abilities of the Evolved allows biology-based technologies to be developed easily- who need robot arms when you could just take a Biological arm and reconfigure it to do the job you want? Who need Humongous Mecha when you could turn your own body into one? Who need tools when you could change a part of your body into one whenever one is needed? And who need mercers and armorers and cosmetic surgeons when you could make and change your own appearance and clothes with a whim of thought?

And maybe write your own Stories with this scenario. Predict the kind of technology may have been developed by a race like this. And maybe write a realistic timeline of such a version of Humanity. Also how their spaceflight and military technology would be.

And I would imagine the horror when the civilizations in your setting and Universe encountered 8 billion of the best infiltrators and most voracious predators ever seen in the entire Multiverse.

Possible scenarios:

Dead Space Crossover- Who is better? Necromorphs or Necromorph-eaters?

Stargate Crossover- How would the Goul'd parasitize and control the mind of a being that have no brain?

Star Wars Crossover- Mechanical technology vs Biotechnology

Halo Crossover- Which virus will win?

Star Trek Crossover- Can Evolved consume Borg?

Minecraft Crossover- Design a mod that recreate the powers from [PROTYPE]!

Plague Inc. Crossover- Mercer Virus custom scenario... how would you design such a scenario? (Recommend Shadow Plague for the base pathogen)

Marvel/Avengers Crossover- How would a faction of Extremis Evolved fare in the [PROTOTYPE] Universe?

InFAMOUS based Crossover- An failed experiment turned every human being into a Conduit. Can the Galaxy Handle them?

Asassin's Creed Crossover- A Prototype Desmond tries to stop the Templars after discovering that an Evolved is not susceptible to the mind controlling effect of the Pieces of Eden. He does by sharing his ... "Gift" to other Humans. Extra Parkour Included. Maybe consuming a few templars for extra genetic memories about their history?

Marvel Extremis/Space-based X-Overs: Replace Blacklight with Extremis, and you have another (probably slightly less than) 8 Billion Evolved of the fiery, energy-ridden kind to (literally) light the galaxy on fire. It. Would. Be. Interesting.

Marvel/Avengers Crossover- An Extremis Outbreak happens in [PROTOTYPE] Manhattan inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How could Marvel Superheroes handle the heat (no Pun intended)? Also, an Extremis Alex Mercer is also waiting somewhere. Will he be siding with Extremis/Mandarin or The Avengers?

Deus EX Crossover: A powerful Nano-Aug have appeared on the market. That allows their users to perform feats like Instant-healing, Shapeshifting and turning part of their bodies into tools/weapons at will (basically All abilities and powers in the [PROTOTYPE] games). How would this technology disrupt the status quo? (Technology Cannibalism optional)

Bioshock Crossover: Fight your way out of the Infected-ridden Rapture!

Spore/Darkspore Crossover: Make a Real(by-universe) Life Creature Editor!

Starcraft Crossover: Kill the bugs? Or Eat the Bugs?

Starcraft Crossover: How bad a technology-using Zerg would be?

Warhammer Crossover: Who is a more voracious eater: Tyranids or Evolved?

Warhammer Crossover: Inquisition to the Corpromorphs!

Dragon Age Crossover: What if the Grey wardens had ALL abilities of the Darkspawn, rather than SOME?

Stargate Crossover: Replicators vs Evolved vs Asurans.

**I would love to see your ideas and the title of your stories in the Comments!**


	11. Chapter 11

**1****st**** Sep 2547GS Research station Red Crown, in orbit around Sur****'****Kesh**

Nearly 9 years after the emergence of the Protoform threat, the Salarians, being one of the best researchers in the wider galaxy, have been slowly, yet steadily, accumulating samples and information about the Protoforms. Multiple research stations have been set up secretly- staged on planets well beyond reach of any Mass Relays where even the FTL resupply ships would require months to reach, staged in the core of some asteroids, on the cold outer planets of the Sur'Kesh system where no prying Protoform would think of visiting, and on Sur'Kesh itself. Oh. Actually, in Low Orbit around it.

Red Crown, the Salarians' main research and analysis facility on the Protoforms, looked externally not very different from any of the several thousand military and civilian space stations in Sur'Kesh Orbit. In fact, Red Crown was built inside one of the Salarians' favorite tourist attraction and gambling site- the Sol Aureus Casino Station. Just behind those ornate, gilded walls was one of the most top-secret biological research facilities in the entire Citadel space. And Red Crown was hidden behind sight for a very real reason- Genetic Engineering, which was necessary for the study of Protoform samples,was all but completely banned by the Citadel Conventions. And although Redwatch had SPECTRE level access that let them bypass Citadel Law for dealing with the Protoform threat, several previous attempts at establishing a research facility have been met with constant threat of terrorism by Turian "Vigilantes" that thought they were doing the right thing. Also. The threat of Protoform infiltrators that was constantly on the move to infiltrate Redwatch facilities have also meant that the only way to not give your enemy a leeway was to stay dark and stay quiet.

Recently, as the 3rd STG Investigation fleet returned from Arcturus after almost 3 months of FTL travel, a new batch of tissue samples and other research materials was deposited onto Red Crown. It was almost conventional for every major STG investigation fleet to submit a sample of any form of biological matter they have encountered during an investigation to Redwatch- both as a mean to monitor the motion and evolution of the constantly-growing Protoform threat, and as an attempt to find a mean to counter it.

Suren: "Sir- this was a small collection of the biological samples we have collected from the remnants of the Arcturus Detonation Event. And you have to look at this."

Suren opened one of the cryogenic preservation containers- and among the racks of frozen tentacles and red-stripped flesh indicative of Protoform activity likely came from their constant use of the Mass Relays within the Arcturus system before the ShanXi relay blew up and sealed them out of Citadel Space; There were few vials of what looked like opalescent crystals whose shape resembled ominously to broken parts and pieces of technology. Not the Organic Technology Protoforms use which are different & doesn't maintain it's shape for long after it's deactivation, but actual, mechanical technology which the Citadel could comprehend.

Saleon: "Fascinating. Are you sure this came from the Protoform-infested system of Arcturus? They were... so different. Must be some new race that happen to cross the system. Or at least were using that system before the Protoforms showed up since all 4 remaining Mass Relays are now active, probably due to Protoform activity. So bad that they met these people-eating identity-stealing monsters right out of their own doorstep. Or it may be someone who are very, very, good at Dealing with them. I have to run a Gene sequencing and Carbon dating test to determine which scenario was likely."

**4****th**** Dec 2547GS, Research Station Red Crown in low orbit around Sur****'****Kesh.**

The mystery only deepens. As the Salarians on Red Crown performed a more detailed test on the tissue samples they brought in, it was clear that the opalescent' crystalline tissue samples, deemed "Race 2", was apparently torn off of another, larger construct when the ShanXi Relay blew up 9 months ago.

And the Radiocarbon dating suggest that the tissue sample were apparently manufactured at most 11 days before the incident- Almost impossibly new in the standard of any form of permanent space stations or ships which could take months for a more conventional race to build, especially given the circumstance where there were significant, active Protoform activity around Arcturus. Which should have precluded any sort of construction activity around it if Race 2 was not Protoform, or is at conflict with them, forcing them to jump in ships that should be much, much older.

Genetic sequencing on the crystalline material, which, despite being almost Technological in appearance, contained large number of still-living cells with a large amount of sequence-able DNA, only deepens the question. The material was evidently grown and not built- plans for the microstructures of the fragments were found encoded within the DNA sequences in a compact, easy to decode, yet incredibly genius way. The genetic plans appear to be self-decoding, forming microstructures that resembled what was found during microscopy of the fragments themselves when cloned and incubated in vitro.

And it looked like that the fragments hold more information than needed just for building itself- DNA sequences from the sample formed structures that are much, much larger than just the fragments themselves when cloned and incubated in the right buffer solution. Structures that resembled a part of a much larger machine, whose exact purpose was completely out of guess by Redwatch Scientists on Red Crown due to the genetic plans being incomplete, likely because the fragments they have collected by now was simply too few to contain a full, detailed plan for what they were used to attach to.

Saleon: "Fascinated. Tests on the cells themselves have revealed more than one plan being encoded by the DNA genome of this strange, partially organic tech. Although access to other parts of the cells' genome would require in vivo cultivation of the cells themselves. Sample does not resemble Protoform at all- Protoform genetic structure chaotic, resemble highly evolved metazoan cells with gene spacing largely at random with random-length non-coding sequence in between. Sample genetic structure highly ordered, resemble programming evidently produced by intelligent entities with genes organized with regularly-spaced repeats and what appeared to be comments of an unknown language. Other structural plans evident in cell Genome- transcription of which appeared to be controlled using a simple, high-fidelity signaling system. And I already had a plan for the signal molecules needed."

In the next 3 months, the Salarians on Red Crown have experimented with samples of this strange, new race that have made appearance within the Arcturus detonation event. The Turians turned in the rest of the crystalline samples as requested by Red Crown with Redwatch, and within the multiple bioreactors and culture vats within the station of Red Crown, more and more fragments of this strange race's technology have emerged. However, most prominently, among many of the decoded structures formed as the cells were cultured and subjected to stimulation by the signal molecules cooked up by Saleon, one especially unnerved them. The structure specified within that specific part of the Cells' genome was a body that resembled an intelligent, mammalian life-form, superficially resembling the Asari both in body plan and in sexual markings, with the only difference being that this life-form had an unknown fibrous material coating it's head instead of the tentacles which the Asari had. It resembled the "Humans" which the Protoforms disguised themselves as in order to lure the Asari First Contact Team down to their planet before taking their forms and stealing their ship, unleashing the Protoform to the wider galaxy.

Suren, as he watched the lifeless figure bobbed up and down inside the cultivation tank, with _Clothing _that resembled Prothean in style already manifested itself around it' body as if they were part of itself, an ability that was only seen in the Protoforms before: "Shocked. I thought that they were unrelated with the Protoforms- their genetic structures are so different that there bear no resemblance whatsoever on the genetic level. Then this body plan shows up. Very different in the mechanism of which they were encoded, but evidently came from the same planet the Protoforms came from as we all seen the Asari first contact team meeting with these 'Hyoo-Manns' before the entire thing went the wrong way 9 years ago."

Saleon: "Suren, you are mostly right on the genetic analysis results of this 'Race 2' when compared to the Protoforms. Except for one trait. I was not supposed to tell you about this since it was considered classified data. Make sure you don't tell anyone else about this once you hear this from me. Let's go."

Under the guise of a toilet break, Saleon and Suren entered the restrooms of Sol Aureus, just outside of the Red Crown facility at the core of the space station.

Inside the restroom, Saleon scanned for any bugs and cameras using his Omni Tool, and the three that were found was instantly hacked by Saleon and tricked to play a continuous loop instead of monitoring the inside of the small cubicle, turning the restroom into a perfectly isolated quiet-room for secret meeting.

Saleon: "You mentioned that there were no resemblance in the genome of the Protoforms and Race 2. except for one thing. The RNA polymerase of the Protoforms and of this new race were homologous. Only the shape however. But definitely came from a common ancestor- they both had the Fingers-Palm-Thumb domain structure which was only found in the Protoform and this 'Race 2', and they all recognized one and only one unique DNA sequence as it's Promotor. No other races had this structure- each race have a completely different shaped-and-structured proteome. Especially the enzymes used for genetic Replication and Transcription since each emerged on their own planet independent from the influence of the other. And same shape always imply common ancestry."

Suren: "So the 'Hyoo-Mann' body plan must be that common ancestor. Two races with the same ancestor that have diverged so much that not even the difference between the Bacteria on Thessia and the Asari themselves could be used to describe the level of difference. And it must happen within 50000 years as that was the cycle of which all intelligent life is purged by an unknown reason all throughout the galaxy. Not even traces of DNA of the previous cycles were left behind so no divergence in the Intelligent species of the galaxy have been recorded to ever exceed what was expected for 50000 years of evolution."

Saleon: "And two races that have diverged so much couldn't possibly share a single Hive Mind, which I assume that the Protoforms have one judged by the coordination in their planning and execution of the mass disguise and the heist of **_We Came In Peace_** in their escape from the Earth and the Infestation of the Galaxy. If they are Hive Minded by ancestry, then they should have diverged so much that they can not possibly share the same set of FTL communication method as there were no two proteins that were conserved across the Protoforms and Race 2 except for the RNA polymerase, which would be necessary to host entangled particles of the same kind, let alone the same pair. Even the DNA polymerases were different."

Suren: "And no signs of Element Zero or anything that could be used to manipulate it was found in their genome, either. So no common method of FTL communication that would imply a shared Hive Mind even if Race 2 had one."

Saleon: "And that's why I think that Race 2 could be utilized in the fight against the Protoforms. Protoforms are a Ravenous Hive. Anything that is not a part of their Hive is considered food. Race 2 was found with recent Protoform activity- which means that unless they have another form of Communication which is not encoded inside their genome that allow them to share a Hive Mind, The Protoforms and Race 2 must automatically become grave enemies toward each other- or at least the instant when a Protoform or a Protoform ship attempted to eat one of them."

**15 Jan 2548G.S., Research station Red Crown in low orbit around Sur****'****Kesh**

Salarian Scientist 1: "Sample 21-Normal. Sample 22-Normal... Wait. I detected a bioelectric signature. Wait. The signature is strengthening... Red Alert! Red Alert! We have a containment breach in Sample Storage Area 5, Follow your training and proceed in Lockdown procedure!"

The lifeless figure within the tank, the "Human" design that was extracted from the biological tissue samples brought back from the Arcturus system, suddenly opened her eyes.

J.A.C.K. , or the part of Jack Zero Sully 2041 (11111111001) that was integrated into the construction of the Wormhole Transporter Experimental Probe that went to the Arcturus system and triggered the second Relay Explosion as it arrived, gained consciousness and woke up, as the part of the coding that was responsible for forming the Evolved form of a New Blacklight Individual was extracted from dormancy in the cellular matter of the Probe's leftover construction materials by the Salarian researchers and activated. Of course, the material that was used in the probe's construction did not carry a complete neural pattern of the Evolved/Individual that contributed the active Biomass for it- But it doesn't mean that the Physical blueprint for the Individual wasn't there. New Blacklight Individuals encode their bodies in a compact pattern stored within each and every of their cell Nucleus- they can reassemble themselves even from a single cell if the environmental conditions were correct. In Constructs, this blueprint is deactivated and put on Dormancy, but it was still there and is capable of being activated, given the right genetic manipulation and signal molecules. A combination that have been extracted from the genome of the fragments and synthesized by the Salarian Researchers of Red Crown.

Salarian Researcher 2: "I think we accidentally woke up one of their Individuals that was trapped inside the fragments we have been researching on... Ready first contact protocol and dump Bose-Einstein Condensate to the vat as soon as the Individual display any signs of hostility!"

J.A.C.K was completely amnesiac- As her cellular material was extracted from the construction materials of a Synthetic, there was no neural pattern of the original Jack Zero Sully 2041(11111111001) recorded whatsoever within the material she was derived from. Recognizing the figure surrounding them as non-Blacklight, J.A.C.K reacted instinctively, thought that the aliens were the Device Builders that were considered primary threat by the Wormhole Transporter Probing Program where the fragments were originally programmed. Biomass quickly assimilated from the culture medium surrounding her, and J.A.C.K soon accumulated enough of it to smash through the tank and escape.

Salarian Researcher 1: "Target hostility detected- Dump the Bose-Einstein Condensate to the tank as quickly as possible!"

The tank's temperature starts to quickly drop as the Bose-Einstein Condensate is pumped into the culture medium within- however, it was already too late. Before the temperature drop to freezing, the glass walls of the holding tank have already started to crack as J.A.C.K powered up her actuators and punched repeatedly against the walls of the tank. And water of this volume required a lot of time and energy pumped out of it to freeze- ice crystals formed on the upper surface of the culture medium as J.A.C.K shattered the reinforced glass and start to tear at the polycarbonate plastic laminate sandwiched within. More ice crystals appeared on the walls as J.A.C.K tore through the glass wall and a hand emerged out of the holding tank. J.A.C.K escaped the tank, ripping the entire front side open as the culture medium start to become a slush from the Bose-Einstein Condensate froze more and more of the water within. As J.A.C.K escaped the holding tank from the front, what left of the tank have became a large chunk of frozen ice, whose shape ironically resembled a Frozen Throne.

Red Crown V.I.: "ATTENTION! Subject E-22 , now designated code-name 'ZERO', have escaped containment! Lockdown of the station is now automatically initiated. ALL Guards, set your Rally point at Sample Storage Area 5 and use suppressing fire on the escaped subject! Re-containment of the Subject is at high priority- Use Cryo rounds as much as possible, do NOT damage the subject as you subjugate it!"

Still confused, J.A.C.K sees multiple squads of what seems to look like bipedal, human-shaped, yet short-built amphibians toward her. Not Infected. And the Planium detection arrays within her body tells her that the technology on the space station contained a large amount of Planium. They may be the Device Builders. Which means that they must be the always-chaotic-evil race behind the unimaginably powerful weapons that are power enough to sterilize an entire system while still leave it suitable for colonization afterward.

"Must not let them know about our coordinates- destroy the station before they could extract anything useful from the samples. The Device Builders must NOT learn about the exact coordinates of New Blacklight."

Cryo rounds flung across her- but it was of no use as J.A.C.K secreted an adhesive on her feet, allowing her to run up the walls of the space station and find cover between the various fixtures and devices on the walls and the ceiling easily. J.A.C.K located one of the amphibian life-forms on the floor of the holding area, and a cloud of distortions and blurred particles soon jetted toward the location of the unlucky Salarian. Another flash of brilliant blue and ultraviolet light and cloud of distortion-like particles later, and the Salarian is no more.

Salarian Guard: "Attention! Race 2 have the same capabilities of the Protoforms! Scatter and use the Anti-Protoform maneuvers!"

Saleon: "Subject capabilities similar to that of the Protoform- Yet the mechanism of which the abilities are implemented are completely different. Fascinating. A divergent species somehow evolving similar capabilities through Convergent Evolution. No attempts of FTL communications are made- Protoform almost certainly use Quantum Entanglement Communication. Race 2 have no capability of QEC either in their genome or their macroscale design. No Mass Effect Fields detected- Tight Beam seems unlikely. Subject likely autonomous. Not the same Hive Mind as the Protoform."

J.A.C.K smashed into and consumed several other Salarians that was trying to shoot her, before plotting a course to escape the Device-Builder's space station. The Station appeared to be constructed out of a metal of which the nuclear forces within the material have been extended in range, which make it surprisingly durable. Not Indestructible though, but definitely a next step toward New Blacklight materials science if it could be replicated. Charging actuators and deploying Fusion thrusters on her back, J.A.C.K jets out from her hiding, and slammed against the place where the station's walls were the thinnest, sharp, diamond-like-carbon claws already formed above her arms and crossed, ready to cut through the thinner part of the wall on one of the corners of the chamber she is currently in.

After a loud bang, the wall of Sample Storage Area 5 have been torn up from it's corner- and a J.A.C.K-shaped hole have been left on the machinery and internal structures underneath, sparks flying everywhere from severed wires and tubing.

J.A.C.K is now on a consuming spree- as she plotted her course of escape out of Red Crown and smashed through multiple walls, small bits of Planium nearby destabilizing from her power reactors creating a chain of explosions and fire as J.A.C.K have started to accumulate Holminid matter from the Device Builders she have consumed on her way out. Once out of the station and reached safety, J.A.C.K would unleash a torrent of electron antineutrinos onto the rest of the station- turning it into a cloud of glowing plasma and completely erasing any evidence of New Blacklight in the hold of the Device Builders.

Red Crown V.I.: "All Crew- Evacuate the station. Find the nearest shuttle and escape pod, and take as many of your personal belongings, data and samples with you- This station may fall, but we can't afford to lose all of our research!"

The station let out it's escape pods as fire and blue colored explosions tore through it's insides, J.A.C.K took time to not leave any bits of samples intact as she detonated the Planium within the gravity generators inside the area.

A silvery, glowing figure escaped the collapsing space station, and as she escaped toward a safe distance, the Holminid matter within J.A.C.K disintegrated as a large energy pulse is dumped into it, bringing it over the electroweak threshold where the conversion of baryons into leptons and neutrinos take place. A beam of electron antineutrinos shot out from the front side of J.A.C.K and struck the core of the space station. Nearly one and half ton of Planium was destabilized in an instant, releasing 2.248*10^25 joules of energy, the equivalent of nearly 7.13 year worth of the total insolation on Sur'Kesh or the total energy output of an average solar flare, at a location that is practically just above the planet's atmosphere.

The Salarians are going to have a really, really bad day.

**The Salarian Matriarchy, at the night hemisphere of Sur****'****Kesh**

The sole moon of Sur'Kesh shines peacefully and brightly at the waxing crescent- everything seemed normal at first glance.

And suddenly, the direction of that crescent was turned the other way, and it starts to shine brighter than Sur'Kesh's sun. Salarians on the street stopped, curious about the change of their moon, street lights turned off as the photocells on the top of them detected enough light for the electrical circuits that controls the lights to think that the day have came.

Salarian bystander 1: "Did the sun... just explode?"

Salarian scientist 2: "No... It was another sun that have appeared above the continent of Su'en. And that sun is now burning that continent into ashes and vapour. See, it was about to arrive."

An enormous, blue fireball appeared on the western horizon of the Salarian Martiarchy, first appearing like another sunrise, before it became bigger and bigger, enveloping almost half of the sky. Salarians panicked and escaped to the nearest shelter.

Salarian bystander 1: "Aren't we supposed to panic and find shelter?"

Salarian scientist 2: "It won't work. That explosion released more then 45 times the energy of the prehistoric Rannoch impact that wiped out every animal on that planet except the Quarians themselves and a few small mammals. Taking shelter would just mean that you are now cooked alive instead of being vaporized. Enjoy the view while it lasts."

The glow from the Planium explosion became brighter and brighter, then unbearably bright as the fireball enveloped the two Salarians, turning them, and every living organism on Sur'kesh, into carbon vapors and mineral ash.

This was the last day of Normalcy in Citadel Space.


End file.
